Honey, were home!
We returned home from our cross country trip to be greeted by our daughter Mandy and husband Markus who had been holding up in the house for a week prior to our arrival. We then spent the next two weeks having all 4 of us catering to the whims of himself...our little grandson. It was super having them all home with us.
Down time
You know how we are always told that the most dangerous area for folks in their house is the bathroom? Well, I momentarily forgot that, slipped coming out of the shower and landed on my back on the corner of a tile step. After laying there for 10 minutes I decided to crawl on my knees. After a quick trip to the hospital for an ultrasound, X-rays and a Cat Scan which revealed no permanent damage to the spleen and liver, I was sent home all drugged up to lay in bed for a week. Slipping in the shower accounts for 70 deaths per year, proving yet again that I am bulletproof. Having recovered from what was no worse than my plane crash, I was off to Santa Barbara for two days of training with Team Rubicon.
For the past two years I have been trying to get trained as a sawyer for Team Rubicon. Sawyers are the guys who generally are the first called out on deployments after a disaster as in most cases trees have toppled all over the place, blocking roads, access to all services as well as to homes. Fire, police and ambulances can hardly respond if there are trees blocking the roads. Sawyers make short work of all that. It was all but impossible to sign up as each time a class was offered we were in France or at the island. When at the island the class was offered in California. Grrrrr! I have operated a chainsaw for decades so it seemed a little insulting to think I would need 2 days to learn how to do it right. But for safety, liability and for sheer competence on how to maintain and repair the equipment out in the field on your own, the training hit the spot.
The conditions were simply hideous. We had to climb a mile up a steep mountain in the pouring rain, fog and freezing cold with mud up to our ankles with all our equipment (helmet, chaps, blood stop kit, gas, oil, tools and or course a chainsaw) to the cut site. The difficult conditions were on purpose, the thinking being that if anyone could not work under those conditions, they might not make it in a disaster zone either.
I left a professional, fully licensed, certified and trained Team Rubicon sawyer. Have saw, will travel.
Florida, again.
5 days after my sawyer training I was deployed to Fort Myers, and Sanibel Island, ground zero where Hurricane Ian hit in October. This disaster is old news, except for the folks who are up to their eyeballs in debris or their roofs are open to the sky.
Ironically, this is my 3rd deployment to the sunshine state which if I didn't know better, seems to be disaster prone. I was first sent in 2019 to Mexico beach in the panhandle (North West corner of the state), after my namesake hurricane Michael blew the place out of existence. This past October I was sent to Daytona Beach (mid state) for flood mitigation and now to Ft. Myers (all the way south). We quickly forget that this was the 5th worse hurricane to hit the US with 155 MPH winds, nearly 100 people died and caused $100 Billion of damage. This is my 7th deployment and surely my last of the year as we slowly prepare to make our way to France.
The week was spent tarping roofs and doing muck outs. We were housed in an enclosed compound with 24 hour armed security in FEMA disaster tractor trailers that had 5 'pods' or rooms in each with 6 submarine type bunk beds (3 high) in each 'pod'. With 20 such tractor trailers, 600 people could be accommodated although we were not even close to that number. Other tractor trailers were mobile kitchens, shower, laundry and bathroom trailers Entire trailers were generators.
The location was a very pretty county park with the only admonitions was to stay away from the pond in the morning and at night because of the alligators. I have written extensively in the past about what we do on these deployments but it is still amusing to hear people say "Oh that happened a while ago so I guess everything is back to normal now". As if. I have posted many pictures in the past but as reminder I offer these few. I could post a hundred more.
One unusual thing that happened was that ROKU was filming a 13 episode special documentary on Team Rubicon which will air in May. Shortly thereafter Netflix is supposed to buy the rights to it. As a results they spent the week imbedded with different teams each day and an entire day with my strike team. The hope is that this will make the work we do much higher profile and help with corporate donations to support the effort. I am in negotiations with either Tom Cruise or Brad Pit to play me in the movie sequel that will surely follow.
And the winner is....
