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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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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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Briefing Complete; Outbound Tomorrow

Ohio TERT members met this afternoon at the rally point in Cambridge. The deployment team was met by logistics and support personnel, all of whom have been working to get to the point of deployment. Following invocation by Mark Beros of Stop Nine Church of Christ, Committee Chair Nick DiCicco provided an update to the team. At present, Ohio TERT, along with TERT teams from Florida, Kentucky, and Georgia will be assigned to Buncombe County Public Safety Communications. Reports of damage and supply shortages have been numerous, and breathtaking. The expectation is that telecommunications are still impacted, public utilities are compromised, and many routes still impassible. DiCicco instructed the dispatchers on the team to prepare for 12-16 hour shifts, and once initial training is complete, to be working with a 100% TERT crew from Ohio and other states while Buncombe County personnel get a much needed break.

The team also heard words of thanks from Ohio 911 Program Office Coordinator Patrick Brandt and Ohio DAS Deputy Director of First Responder Communications Initiatives Angela Canepa. The team will depart from Cambridge at 6:30 on Tuesday morning, with an Ohio State Highway Patrol escort to the West Virginia state line.

It is believed that the need for TERT personnel will continue beyond the initial 14 day deployment window. Public safety telecommunicators who are interested in deploying in the near term (this would be mid-October through the end of the month) should contact Committee Chair Nick DiCicco at Nick.DiCicco (at) cvdispatch (dot) com .

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FOR RELEASE: HELENE DEPLOYMENT

SEPTEMBER 29, 2024

Following the landfall of Hurricane Helene, and receipt of a request for help, a team of Ohio 911 dispatchers, radio technicians, and support personnel are heading to North Carolina to lend assistance.

Ohio TERT, part of the national Telecommunicator Emergency Response Taskforce, are a group of public safety personnel from across Ohio who have volunteered for a 14-day deployment to assist local 911 centers whose own personnel have been on duty without break since Helene’s historic rainfall caused catastrophic flooding to interior sections of the U.S. Southeast.

The 19-member team is comprised of members from across the state, and includes personnel from dispatch centers in Strongsville, Urbana, Bedford, Westlake, North Lawrence, Butler and Franklin Counties, and the State of Ohio. They will be assigned to work shifts at centers in the hardest hit communities of Western North Carolina. There, the team will assist in handling the crushing call volume, provide relief to allow home agency personnel time to assess facility damage, and address their own home situations, which were not immune from Helene’s impact. Additionally, radio engineers from Ohio MARCS will lend assistance with stabilizing radio infrastructure and assist in repair operations, where appropriate.

Ohio TERT Chair Nick DiCicco, Director at Chagrin Valley Dispatch near Cleveland, said that Ohio TERT is deploying to do their part to help. “The devastation across Western North Carolina is incomprehensible. We are just doing our part to help where we can.” TERT Team Leader Johnna Sells, from Franklin County Emergency Management and Homeland Security, added, “We’re doing what we can to help our peers. This job is tough enough, and much more so during disasters. This is our chance to show up for each other.”

The team departs Tuesday morning from Cambridge, and expects to arrive in Asheville, North Carolina on that afternoon.

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Ohio TERT is part of the National Joint TERT Initiative. For media inquiries during their deployment, please contact Ohio TERT PIO Mory Fuhrmann at fuhrmannm@mifflin-oh.gov.

 

PDF Version of this Press Release

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Assignment: Helene

The team was initially stood down from a potential deployment to Florida, and no sooner had that message been passed than an EMAC request came through from the North Carolina Emergency Management Agency. Helene’s inland impact has been catastrophic in areas of Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. Flash flooding has cut off many areas of several states, and even washed away parts of interstate highways.

Ohio TERT has been assigned to report to Catawba County, North Carolina on Tuesday. The team will rally at Cambridge, Ohio on Monday afternoon. They will receive a briefing and invocation, share a dinner with the support team, and department early Tuesday morning. The team’s make-up for this deployment is (19) personnel, and includes dispatchers, line supervisors, and radio technicians from PSAPs across the state as well as Ohio MARCS. In addition to the personnel, the team is taking Chagrin Valley Dispatch’s Type III field communications unit (callsign HAVOC), a cache of (48) radios, a mobile repeater tower, and various stuffs to support the team.

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Terra Firma Ohio

The team returned on Tuesday afternoon to Gahanna, and following a debriefing, headed home to their respective parts of the Buckeye State. On behalf of the entire TERT OH-1 team, and the Ohio TERT Committee, we express our THANKS to the agencies and organizations that made the deployment possible. All deployed personnel should have received information on the upcoming reimbursement webinar meeting. The in-person team AAR meeting is being planned now.

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Last Stop, Next Stop…

Representing for the Buckeye State

The team stopped last night in Ocala, Florida, for the night. Tonight, they are stopped in Knoxville, Tennessee, for a last dinner as TERT OH-1, and to assist local authorities in fishing a goalpost out of a river.

Tomorrow, the team will arrive back in Ohio, and head back to their respective friends, families, and centers. There will be meetings, debriefings, and after action reports, for sure. From the newest member of the Task Force all the way up to the Committee Chairs, this has been at once a learning experience for all of us, and a sight to behold. Likely, many articles will be written, and seminars held, to talk through how this EMAC activation went from a paper request from Florida to assembling a full Task Force in 4 days. But, for the entire Ohio TERT team, as we witnessed it, this was a great moment for our team, for our State, and for all the organizations that supported our work to carry out our chartered mandate.

God Bless Florida.

We done good.

Its True. It’s Damn True.

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Job Done; Packing for Home…

The team ended their last shift at midnight. Job done, the team is packing up this morning, and expects to leave for Georgia this afternoon. The team is tired, but looking forward to a hot shower, and being able to sleep in a bed, inside a structure. The quote that has been given many times during the deployment is, “…experience of a lifetime…” This team of telecommunicators, themselves the best of their home agencies, were tested in many ways. They worked without days off, in a center foreign to them, on a phone and CAD system foreign to them, and they not only filled the need, they THRIVED. This grit and determination is part of what makes the TERT program such a critical tool for public safety communications centers in the aftermath of disasters like Ian.

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