Taking down the state flag.
The entire Taskforce is now back in Ohio, after OH-2 and the remaining members from OH-1 returned on Wednesday afternoon. On Tuesday night, the team has a celebratory dinner along with the arriving logistics crew at a local Asheville restaurant to both celebrate what we view as a successful deployment, but to also honor and memorialize the overwhelming loss the region has suffered. Our work in Buncombe County has completed, but so very much remains to be done during the time ahead,.
The main drop point was in Cambridge around 4PM, but vehicles and various stuffs were being returned well into the evening. Upon returning to Orange Village in Cuyahoga County, team lead Nick DiCicco did an interview with Cleveland Fox affiliate WJW-TV. Nick gave discussion on the work the team did, but also provided some insight into the loss that has been endured in the region.
Outbound.
Lots of mixed emotions on returning back home- to loved ones, to work, to life. Lots of relationships forged with personnel from Buncombe County, Asheville, other TERT personnel, and folks at the camp. The personnel on both teams became like family to one another. The conditions at camp in many ways helped the team to be able to empathize with the community and folks they were interacting with. Having a home taken away – no place to rest or feel secure – is a jarring, traumatic experience, to say the least. Despite all the training the team brought to bear, it can still be difficult to establish a trusting relationship with a disaster victim without having some measure of the lived experience yourself. Becoming adopted members of the greater Asheville community gave the team a sense of responsibility and ownership while working along side their Buncombe Cunty counterparts.
TERT and tactical communications personnel remain at Buncombe County, and likely will for quite awhile. As mentioned, the road ahead to recovery for the entire region across North Carolina and Tennessee will take a significant amount of time. Too, ‘recovery’ will have a different look for each person, family, and community. The area has irrevocably changed as a result of Helene, so recovery may also include adjusting to a new sense of normality.
The team is set to reconvene later in November to conduct a post incident debriefing to clean supplies, go over the good, the bad, and the ugly for this deployment, and see what the path ahead for Ohio TERT looks like. As ever, we express thanks to each Member’s home agency and their leadership for allowing their personnel to deploy. Likewise, we acknowledge the partner agencies who lent stuffs, vehicles, and other Members for support and logistics. Our state level partners – Ohio MARCS, Ohio EMA, Ohio DPS – also played an important coordination role, and in MARCS’ case, sent people and equipment to help restore communications.
Thank you, a thousand times over.
#NCStrong
#WeAreOhioTERT