Day Four has turned into the most interesting day so far, for no other reason than it started at 4 a.m. Sunday morning and will not end until sometime Monday evening. It started with the Red Cross staff moving from sleeping in the “Red Cross shelter” to the “Staff shelter,” which is hosting all of the linemen that are working. They get in about 7 p.m. - 9 p.m. and “lights out” at 10 p.m.
I was really looking forward to having a full seven hours of sleep instead of the normal two or three. What we didn't consider is that the linemen start getting up about 4 a.m. to be out restoring power! Once the alarms started going off and they started getting up, I got up and headed into the shelter to see how the first night back in the Red Cross shelter went without having some of the staff on site.
Things were looking good, so after getting an update from the shelter manager and asking if she had any requests I headed to the E.O.C. (Emergency Operations Center) with the shelter manager to introduce her to the Command Staff, and for the morning briefing. She got a really good understanding of what was going on and how to best work with the E.O.C. to make sure all of the city residents are taken care of.
After the city meeting I had to meet with the County Commissioner to set up the Red Cross food service for the other seven shelters. Due to some of the other areas getting power back, some of the support is being diverted to Dunklin County, where I am. Instead of only having three drop off sites and the other shelters having to go pick up their food, all of the meals will be delivered right to the shelter.
Once that was completed we headed back to the shelter where we had a shelter staff meeting and then started serving lunch. The afternoon was spent just helping out in the shelter any way I could. We had a brief scare when our generator shut down and we lost power again. Since the generator had been running for six days the vibration from the engine caused one of the doors to open, which tripped a safety device that shut it down. A few strips of duct tape applied by the fire department and we were back up and running!
After that excitement died down it was back to the E.O.C. for the evening briefing, where the main focus was FEMA coming to town tomorrow to meet with the local governments to start the recovery process. Additionally, we discussed the need to get a shower trailer into Kennett for the residents to use. After that it was back to the shelter, where I found out we were short staffed for the night. So… it is now 3:00 a.m. and I am seeing the results of my E.O.C. meetings. We have requested a police presence so at least every half hour we have had a police officer in, and a few times we had a visit from the Bootheel Drug Task Force (which from what I hear, is like a SWAT team plus.)
Until tomorrow!
Mark McWilliams