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The Hurricane Hotline

HAVOC-1 is becoming the home of the Hurricane Hotline.

Yesterday, the crew manning the ‘Hurricane Hotline’ aboard HAVOC-1 took approximately 1,300 calls. Amongst 4-6 different dispatchers, that’s a brisk pace. In addition, the staff working in the Buncombe County PSCC are also taking calls at an extremely brisk pace. At the conference call tonight, Committee Chair Nick DiCicco said the call volume was down juuuuuust a bit today, but still quite high. Many areas of Buncombe County are still cut off by impassible roads. Response personnel from every acronym in  the disaster response alphabet are operating in the Blue Ridge Mountain region, including TERT teams from Ohio and several other states.

The crew from Ohio MARCS is continuing radio infrastructural work with radio programming and assisting their North Carolina VIPER counterparts. Today, they also repositioned the mobile Tower on Wheels approximately 200 feet further up a mountain, which has been incorporated for use as a repeater site on the VIPER network.

Personnel from Florida TERT are preparing to return home due the approaching Tropical Storm Milton, forecasted to cross South Florida as a potentially major hurricane next week. Meanwhile, the team now has reliable, secure access to showers and a laundry facility, welcomed luxuries on the operation.

Word has gone out to organizations across the State of Ohio of the need for additional public safety telecommunicators to assist with assembling TERT-OH-2. Interested personnel are encouraged to fill out an application on the Ohio TERT website. This second team is expected to depart Ohio on or about October 15th and return around Halloween.

The team are tired, but are doing great work.

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Reinforcements From Ohio

Operations are continuing at the Buncombe County PSCC. The Public Safety Communications Center, the back-up PSAP, and HAVOC-1 as a 311 center are all very busy. The teams are continuing 12ON-12OFF shift rotations. Additional personnel from Florida TERT are arriving, and work is continuing to coordinate a second team from Ohio to head down around the middle of the month.

Today, the team received a sizable delivery of goods from the Butler County Sheriff’s Office, including 2 pallets of water, food, clothes and other essentials for Ohio TERT and the other TERT teams working at Buncombe County PSCC. Supplies are still rare commodities, so we are appreciative to Sheriff Jones, Captain Matt Franke, and others at the BCSO who coordinated this delivery.

Coordination work continues to get an TERT-OH-2 team assembled. Personnel interested in deploying should immediately fill out an application through the team website. To review, 2 years service, basic ICS classes, and EMD certification are all required for assignment. THIS IS A HARDSHIP ASSIGNMENT. Every governmental agency and NGO operating in Western North Carolina is operating under hardship conditions.

 

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A New Team Member; HAVOC-1 Gets to Work

The TERT teams from Ohio, Georgia, and Kentucky have split into equally staffed day and night shifts. Call volume remains extremely high; rescue operations are still underway in parts of Buncombe County, as well. Partial water service is being restored in very limited increments. The team now has access to shower facilities in the form of a mobile showering trailer.

HAVOC-1 has been placed in service as a center to field non-emergency and informational calls. This was made possible due to advanced programming by Motorola Systems that enabled HAVOC-1 telephone system to receive calls routed through the Buncombe County PSCC system and identified as informational inquiries. The apparatus has the ability to accommodate (6) call taker positions, and it is most certainly being put to work; inquiries are coming fast and furious.

This guy is staying at basecamp for now.

He is helping answer calls in HAVOC-1

While on a supply run to a local Publix, Johnna came across a liter of puppies that had weathered through Helene’s winds and flooding. The entire liter found homes quickly, save this one fellow. Keeping in mind TERT’s mission to provide any and all assistance, the little guy was taken back to basecamp, where he remains in our care. He has taken to the crew quickly, and following some training, will be put in rotation to start answering administrative calls aboard HAVOC-1.

We were informed officially today of the mission being extended for an additional (14) days. The team back in Ohio is working through Ohio EMA on modifying the EMAC MRP.

Committee Member Scott Brown did an interview with Cleveland Fox Affiliate WJW-TV this morning that can be viewed here.

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Stay Ahead of the Curve

Staying ahead of the curve is the name of the game thus far for Ohio TERT. The team arrived last night to their assigned quarters, at a nearby school with other TERT teams. Lights went out at 11PM. The lights came back on for the dispatchers at 05:30 (that’s oh-five-thirty, as in OMG, it’s early) for the entire team to report to the Buncombe County Public Safety Communications Center to get their badges, and receive training from offgoing Bumcombe County personnel. Ohio TERT is working at the center with their counterparts from Florida, Kentucky, Virginia and Georgia. Tomorrow, a 9-person team from Alabama will also join. After receiving training, the dayshift started working in the center, and the nightshift crew returned to quarters to sleep.

We are appreciative and thankful for all of the donations received. These funds helped the team to deliver a significant amount of diapers and formula to Buncombe County personnel and their families, who had run out of such supplies days ago. With the funds received, Johana Gonzales-Sells, Ohio TERT’s resident camp counselor, will be making a 4-hour round trip journey to the nearest big box store every other day to purchase more supplies for Ohio TERT and Bumcombe County personnel.

HAVOC has been programmed to be able to receive non-emergency calls for Bumcombe County at the dispatch positions aboard the unit. If/when the decision is made to utilize this setup, HAVOC will have the ability to act as a primary 311 center to relieve some pressure on the call queue.

Our radio engineers from Ohio MARCS have been likewise getting down to business. Today’s venture saw them working with their North Carolina VIPER counterparts to assist with damage survey and repair at a mountaintop tower site, and working to deploy the Tower on Wheels they brought with them. They have also been provided appropriate Motorola programming credentials to assist with programming of out-of-state radios to work on the VIPER system.

At present, there is power, but no running water.

At tonight’s conference call, Committee Chair Nick DiCicco indicated that the probability of mission extension is very high, even with the multi-state TERT teams already working. Committee personnel back in Ohio have been compiling a tentative roster of personnel who may be able to deploy as TERT-OH-2 to support what is looking to become one of the largest disaster mobilizations so far this century.

 

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Have Arrived Safely in Asheville

The team departed Cambridge this morning at 6:30 and headed down Interstate 77 with an escort from the Ohio State Highway Patrol to the West Virginia state line. In total, the fleet consists of HAVOC (field communications unit), 3 SUV’s, 2 pickup trucks, a fuel trailer, a radio Tower On Wheels, a generator, and a supply trailer. While on route, the team received word from Buncombe County Public Safety Communications of the need for diapers and baby formula (we cannot imagine why babies don’t like MRE’s). So, the team stopped a couple time and purchased all the diapers and formula they could find.

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Ohio TERT arrived in Asheville around 7:00 and arrived at their assigned shelter facility at a school about an hour later. Personnel from Florida TERT are also there. At last report, the team was safe and establishing base camp.

 

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