Wednesday PM Update

Day 6 of the Hurricane Helene Disaster

[text from David, images from David +Ian]

Greetings from the back porch of Little House in Black Mountain. Ian is here, and we're having another fab supper (amazing what food comes out of the freezer when we "have" to eat it). It is dark. We're both wearing headlamps. But I'm winding down after another tough day (and Ian too). As most of you know, cooking is my happy place, grounding place, and creating something delicious for others serves my soul. We are very lucky to have plenty of propane, a fridge in the camper (powered by propane), and good company.

Today was amazing...

1. I can share that something on the order of 90% of the roads in the town limits (which admittedly are small) are now passable. The same public works crew that did awesome work on our street in January’s freezing weather... did it again. Awesome work.
   I will note that bureaucratically, this is supposed to be done by NCDOT. They didn’t wait, and besides, they're overwhelmed with the Interstates.

2. Our local Ingles store opened, and food supplies at the distribution point flowed (as well as the still-considerable private donations of food) — but PLEASE don’t send any more. We have semi trucks of food here. There are mountains of water in jugs, bottles, and tanker trucks. We’re good.

3. All the gas stations (that have power) are open and have regular resupply because 2 out of 3 interstates in/out of the region are two-way traffic. No real lines at the gas stations now.

4. If any of us in command determines we’re in short supply of a critical item, we have two NC troopers who will drive lights/sirens to the airport depot to pick up whatever we need and bring it back. Fuel arrives via the National Guard (with a lights/siren escort) twice a day at every fire department reachable by road. The one fire department I know that doesn’t have road access yet has repeat helicopter deliveries/extractions.

5. I have 8 experienced, trained communication experts... 7 of which are brother firefighters, and 1 who is unlucky enough to be a cop (a detective specializing in arson) from Suffolk Co, VA. They are now doing the work that Dennis, Claire, and Ian were doing for me... and I’m mostly in a management role.

   Those who have known me a long time may be amused that I was fixing repeaters in their big bus today, the same type that my company National Interop (back in 2004-2007) sold to FEMA and local cities for this kind of deployment. We're all brothers now, and 2 of them came back to the house to "help" Ian and me with the camper (more on that in a moment).

6. The VA crew will be taking over for me... I’ll transition them tomorrow, and take Friday off (well, mostly) and become more of an advisor than a doer. This is the phase of the disaster when paid, experienced crews show up (FEMA pays for them) and my 8 guys are here for 14 days — and are delighted to serve, do anything that needs to be done (some will be directed tomorrow into other roles, since we don’t need 8 for radios), and make some serious overtime pay. Everyone wins — experience is massive in these situations.

7. Fewer Rescues / More Welfare Checks... We’re not quite out of rescue mode, but at this point, it is mostly finding people who lost their lives during the initial event... and welfare checks. Most of the calls now are 'typical' wrecks, home medical situations, falls, heart attacks — yet we’re all on the edge of our seat about house fires. As electricity turns on, houses that don’t have their mains turned off may spark and burn. Yes, we’ve turned off the main breakers in both of our houses just as a precaution.

   In our small town, house fires and big traffic wrecks are handled by the first fire/rescue department, and then surrounding regions arrive shortly thereafter to get to adequate staffing for the incident. Now that every small town and jurisdiction is handling its own disaster, we need help. That’s where the fire crews and ambulances from all over the U.S. come in, just like during Katrina. Our ambulance today was from Arcadia, and one of the fire crews from Ohio. This is why there are so many first responders... because small towns can’t help each other. We need enough staff and equipment right here, right now to handle each event. Happily, we have them. Again, we’re good.

8. The cavalry isn’t just coming, it’s here. More managers, more boots on the ground, more National Guard troops (helped them with their radios today).

AND YES WE NEED YOU
Tomorrow, [Editor note: most likely now today, Thursday] you will hear from me how you can help. Rebuilding is a concept almost overwhelming, and we know FEMA can’t do it all.

We’re setting up a dedicated Black Mountain rebuild effort... and we’ll be depending upon all of you.

I’ll be contributing content and information from right here on the ground... as well as our good and long-time friend Lisa Jennings from USFS, who we helped when the G5 Trails in Old Fort started up... and now is serving our town. We’re working together on this, and it’s all for the good. The very good. Because Lisa and her husband chose Black Mountain on purpose, just like Jen and me. And we want to rebuild our town and community.

OPEN THIS UPDATE .

Love,
David.

P.S. Ian just had his shower, and mine is next. We pumped the rain barrel water into the camper, and we’re having our first hot shower since this began. And yes, the Suffolk Co fire guys came over to help us pump the water (they wanted to see the solar setup too).