Operation "Not Fogotten"
Taylor County, Florida
Here we go again. Another hurricane, another disaster
and many more lives ruined. I got the call to grab my ‘GO’ bag’ (the other two are in France and in
California) and head to the airport to join a strike team with Team Rubicon to 'save the world, one hurricane at a time' :) When we landed, I was surprised to see many people heading towards us. I stopped one to ask what was going on and she
said they were running away from a disaster.
We were running towards it.
Disasters pretty much all look alike after a while
It was named because this is the part of Florida that does not attract many tourists and tends to be 'forgotten'. Of course the damage done by Hurricane Idalia, with maximum sustained winds of 125 MPH (205 Km/h) was staggering. There were downed communication towers, structural damage, major flooding along the coast from substantial storm surge, and downed trees from high winds. The hurricane had done it's thing and we were there to deal with the aftermath. Same old story for us, mind numbing shock for its victims. We were at ground zero, mere miles from Perry, Florida, on the 3rd wave of this operation.
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You get the idea
Each 'wave' works for a week then is sent home and is replaced with a fresh group. Disasters anywhere become old news to the rest of the world after a few days as there are more interesting things to report on. But not for these folks. Out of a total of 8 deployments, this was my 4th to Florida, this time in the panhandle, again. That is, the North West corner of the state on the gulf side. I really like Florida but I am beginning to think it is a little disaster prone..jpg)
For the first time, I was not in the flood zone but in an area where 10's of thousands of large, tall, old growth trees had been blown over as their root ball was shallow and in sandy soil. I could tell you the whole truth in that there were hundreds of thousands of these trees but I would understand that you would not believe me. Even weeks after the hurricane had hit, we were cutting trees that had fallen over people's wells and pumps, making it impossible for them to be repaired so they were still without water.
One man had a tree fall over his cattle pen and was unable to load his stock to take them to market. He was quoted $16,000 by a local firm to remove the enormous trees and was getting ready to take the money out of his retirement savings. We sent 3 saw teams and a skip loader and the deed was done in a day. In all, we had $80 million of logistical equipment on site to service 70 Team Rubicon members rotating one wave at a time. This, including FEMA shower trailers, toilet trailers, massive generators and housing trailers.
Meanwhile, back at the island, Janice was holding down the fort. With friends checking in on her, picking her up to take her to social events and generally just living it up, she probably hardly noticed I was gone!
The transition
Man, if there seems to be some repetition to this, it is because there is. We pull up stakes every 4 months and move on to a different lifestyle in a different country and / or continent. We have been at it for a while and we realized the other day that this is the 57th time we have done this since I retired. When anyone asks, we jokingly say that when the bills come in, it's time to pack our bags and skip town before they can catch us. We love where we are but love where we are going too. We return to where 8 months ago we had set up and organized the things we want to get done when we return.
Still, transitions, especially here at the island, are no walk in the park. Pulling boats out of the water, winterizing and servicing engines, having our pontoon boat shrink wrapped, tarping the jet ski, covering Tecumseh, our Birch bark canoe, the BBQ, bringing all the outdoor furniture indoors, draining the entire water system so pipes don't burst when they freeze, removing all canned goods and the printer (the ink cartridges would freeze) and on and on... Whew! Then there are all the indoor tasks like emptying the fridge, tossing all the partially used condiments and food items only to buy them all over again in 24 hours when we land in California.
It is not an easy life we lead. Is it all worth it? Absolutely!!
