Well, this past September, we had an actual, FEMA-declared disaster, when the Delaware River overflowed into Bucks County, PA (pics at
www.ubefire.com) .
Now, this was a short-term disaster, however, I think that it was very informative because during the two days of the actual flooding, and in the days after, I was on the front lines of the recovery and cleanup efforts.
Here's what I learned in our incident.
First of all, an evacuation order is not given lightly. We were called to station by emergency management long before the peak of the flooding, and were told to go house to house with the evacuation notice. In most cases, people just asked us "How much time" and we'd say "eight hours, tops, more like six" and they'd get to work either moving stuff upstairs or taking stuff out of the house. One family, right along the river, was out the door with backpacks and all they needed for a few days at a friend's place in a matter of 5 minutes. They must have been pre-packed. But others refused to evacuate, claiming that our evacuation was "over-reacting." Well, sure enough, once the waters were up and really dangerous, we get a call (the phone lines were still up) "The Water Is Coming Into My House! Get Me Out of Here!" - so we dispatch two ATV's and put the boat on standby, and when they get there, the person was standing on their front porch with 5 suitcases and a yappy little dog in one of those doggie bag carriers. They were told they can take ONE and only ONE bag, and we don't care which one. At this point, the guys on the ATV were in danger too. Listen to the evacuation orders. They are serious.
As the incident evolves, water, fuel and groceries (not just food) - in that order - run out quickly. One of the immediate effects of the flooding was the widespread contamination of water wells, due to sewage and oil flowing into them as the floodwaters crept up. Additionally, the power went out, and for people with a well (and that includes us at the firehouse) that meant no water, even if our well was not contaminated (it was).
With the main road through the area out of commission, and the bridge over the Delaware closed (which leads to the only real town in the area) and the one gas station on our side of the bridge under water and without power, we also began to run low on fuel for our ATV's (more on them later) and for our generator.
The floodwaters peaked at about 3:00 AM on a Sunday morning. As the sun came up Monday, the extent of the damage was clear - many houses were submerged, trees were down, there were hundreds of tons of foul, stinking mud everywhere, hissing propane tanks, leaking oil tanks and all manner of disgusting sewage from hundreds of septic tanks that had been flushed out by the flood waters.
But, with the sun rising, we heard all around us the sound of machinery - backhoes, chain saws, portable pumps - as the locals came out to start the cleanup. The roads were impassable due to water, mud and debris.
We had about 125 bottles of drinking water - I'd say that we were short by about 1,000 bottles, given the fact that many people were coming to the fire station seeking water. It took two days for the US Army to bring two trailers with drinking water, which they parked down by the general store. People along the river relied on these water sources for over a month while wells were decontaminated or re-drilled.
We had 20 ATV's, some with trailers at the firehouse, mostly those of members, but local residents loaned a few to the fire company. We deployed search teams to go house-to-house looking for any bodies and to get a preliminary damage assessment. Our fire company also deployed six pump teams to pump out basements. The pump teams were made up of 3-4 people, and each carried a trash pump, 20' of suction hose, 150' (or more) of 3" discharge hose (actually old firehose), fuel, tools and a portable fire radio or FRS radio (we established a "common" channel for the community to use FRS and GMRS radios to reach us, as most phone lines were down).
While pumping out basements kept us busy, our real concern was a fire or medical emergency in our coverage area. Cell phone service is virtually nil in our area, and we got no support at all from the ham radio folks, so part of the job of the pump crews was to be a communications channel in the event of an emergency. This would prove to be a valid concern, because on the 3rd day of the clean-up, we got a call for a structure fire in our area, and while most of us raced back to station to load ATV's with fire hoses and nozzles (we'd use a portable pump for each handline - the fire trucks could not get through), we were able to send an officer to the scene to investigate what turned out to be nothing more than a smoke condition - no fire.
It was not all good. We did experience one nutcase insisting he was "with FEMA" and he was doing solo house-to-house searches, flashing a phony badge to cross the river bridge when it was only open to emergency services workers and at one point, driving into New Jersey (the next state over) to the gas station and telling them to fill is truck and "bill it to FEMA" (they did, then they came after him later for the money). We ended up calling the state police to deal with him. I'm sure in a larger community you'd see more of that sort of thing.
We also closed off the roads leading to our area. At first, this was just to reduce the huge number of sightseers as the floodwaters were rising. Later, it became more important as people claiming to be locals came to "help their brother get their stuff out" once the evacuation orders had been made public. I was manning the roadblock for a while and this guy in a big white truck pulls up and says "I'm going to pick up my brother's stuff for him" and I'm like - "OK, what's your brother's name?" and he goes "Umm….Mike?" and go, "What's Mike's last name?" and he says "Uh….um" and then quickly backs up. This happened more than once - perimeter security matters, as it turns out.
Finally, people don't keep their papers secure. How many tales of woe did I hear about lost documents, lost pictures and more. It's not like a flood isn't a possibility in our area, but for some reason there were heartbreaking stories of lost letters, diplomas and more - all because someone didn't put the documents in a Rubbermaid bins.
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