The death toll climbs and the images are slowly posting to social media, uploaded by folks able to get close enough to record the aftermath deposited by Hurricane Florence’s fury. I wrote a piece on the rescuers salvaging abandoned animals, and that is an ongoing feat performed by first responders and civilians alike. This segment will go beyond that and include the discoveries public safety members report/record, much of which is not pretty whatsoever.
The cover photo depicting the surreal nature of earth folded like a quilt was taken by a cop in the Carolinas. Naturally, navigable roads are patrolled for signs of life, sounds of Help!, and status-reporting so that the folks staffing the local emergency operations center (EOC) can chronicle field studies and revamp game-plans: roads which are navigable; power lines down; pretty much anything perilous to the citizenry as well as where it is deemed safe for life to resume while locals pick up the pieces…for as long as it takes.
In Florida, our hurricanes often create the proverbial sinkholes in streets and private property as well as a litany of potholes due to torrential downpour steadily softening the asphalt. The sewer systems can not swallow the rain swiftly enough, so the wet stuff just batters and pools on surface streets. Pothole-filling crews can not come in until street-clearing crews laboriously wipe clean the debris strewn about streets. There is often a matter of power company lineman having first dibs in the event utility poles and/or lines are down, and that takes cops to cordon off surface streets and detour vehicles which somehow believe they can simply go about life as if nothing is oddly different.
Invariably, there’ll be at least one motorist who drives up to a washed-out road saying “But I live right over there,” as if a cop posted there to redirect traffic has that magic wand and pixie dust to wondrously pooooof a brand-new bridge. It happens all the time, folks. Some people lack the concepts of change ushered in by natural disasters, and police officers get to handle those mindboggling persons who seem to have perfected mental-block capacities. My life since police retirement has never been so dull.
Cops are perhaps most prominent on open roads, especially interstates where cars are jockeying and taking advantage of the traffic cops they fail to see until colored lights are flashing behind them. Hurricanes have a way of altering those usual variables so that none of it exists…for a duration decided by state public safety officials and the clean-up crews who get the task of clearing the debris field created by Mother Nature.
It is unmistakably eerie what a hurricane can do to a city, county, state. I worked immediately after Hurricane Charley in 2004. My department was one among many assigned by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to assume police duties for those local governments whose jurisdictions were decimated, to include their police force’s buildings and fleet. The sight of police cruisers smashed and junked like those you see flattened and stacked at automobile compact yards is indelible. Police HQ’s blinds and signs hanging and swinging to the view of spectators peering in where there used to be solid walls informs of the incredible power of hurricanes.
After a hurricane passes through, public safety is already on duty and picks up the ball as best possible. With it comes scenery to shake the soul. Sadly, fatalities are uncovered, and the scene is treacherous in which to work. Police and fire personnel work together, and make every effort to hold each other up. One report out of Wilmington, North Carolina detailed a fire department crew which came upon a dead mother and infant. Such tragedies generated by natural causes weigh on the public safety personnel who know all too well the plus-one rule: if there is one, there may be more. Psychologically, overwhelm easily creeps in and starts the hour-glass of despair when strength is most critically necessary.
Although rhetorical, police and fire personnel are closely entwined when responding to calls for service. Some calls require both services thus bonding personnel via common causes related to public safety and property protection. Each agency is required to write its own report, referring to the other’s actions while on scene. Whether together on the streets or off-duty at family functions, members will tacitly reminisce one another’s presence during the most grueling scenes…such as a mother-infant death incident created by an unstoppable fury for which there is no amount of training to make it better.
Granted, police and fire services personnel working during hurricanes have so much on the mind while one glaring factor jockeys among competing thoughts: Family.
Witnessing and putting into words the horrors created by hurricane bombardment compellingly pulls at the heart when you wish to go embrace your own family but can’t, not until some semblance of normalcy is achieved and it is decided that breaks are in order. Cops serving during hurricanes is akin to military servicemembers pondering loved ones while serving abroad in notably hostile territory with danger lurking in 360 fashion.
Many years later, I recall the feeling of craving to get home while also experiencing awkwardness about peeling myself away from my brothers and sisters in police and fire uniforms, those who worked the same unspeakable city-ravaging disaster.
I remember reporting for duty days after a hurricane had mostly cleared, watching merchants crying over obliterated businesses which they spent years and dollars to build from nothing. Most of those businesses were patronized by police/fire personnel. The flip side is that plans to build anew, subsidized by insurance settlements and/or federal dollars relegated for such purposes, ushered a sort of rebirth of the city. In all, plenty of stories are reminisced and police officers file new reports in a restructured jurisdiction…as life proceeds forward until the next uninvited hurricane decides to push through like it’s nobody’s business.
