I don't know why, but some people say my friends are weird.
Operation Phone Home
Roswell New Mexico
Don't ask me, I have no idea how they come up with these goofy operation names. I assume that this name was an ET tie in with the little green men who came in on a flying saucer to Roswell.
I barely got home from Georgia last month, long enough to do my laundry when I was back on the plane to go to Roswell New Mexico, because 400 homes were under 4 feet (1.5M) of water from recent flooding. Some folks are a little more disaster junkies and try to go on every operation they can. I love helping but I have other things going on in my life that need attending to. Janice is a super trooper, but I don't want to push my luck and get back to find that she has moved out, or that "Raoul" has moved in.
People often ask just how many greyshirts there are. Greyshirts are the grey T shirts with the Team Rubicon logo people earn after they get it dirty on an operation when they deploy. At last count, there are 161,000 Team Rubicon members nationally. That is, they have gone online and clicked the button that says "I want to join". Of those, approximately 10% are deployable. That is, they have been vetted, passed the background check and completed the most basic training to be of service on a deployment. So now we are down to about 16,000 people. Of those, roughly 10% (1,600) actually deploy. Those are the people who answer the call and show up. Of those, a small percentage are trained sawyers who are often the first called as nobody (police, fire, ambulances or the power company) is going anywhere or able to do anything until roads are cleared and access to driveways or to a home is possible.
This tree fell down. The trunk went the length of the homeowner's yard, and the canopy covered his neighbors entire yard as seen here.
There are basically 4 types of greyshirt operations. Muck outs are when a home has been flooded and a strike team guts it. They remove all furniture and appliances, then tear out all the drywall and insulation to the studs so the house can be re-built.
Tarping is when a roof is covered with a temporary tarp to prevent the rain from introducing more water into the house.
Sawyers always work in teams of two and cut trees that prevent access. While one cuts, the other is a spotter who keeps an eye out to keep everyone out of what we call the 'blood bubble'; the distance a chain saw can reach. There are usually an endless number of them. Trees, that is.
Finally, we have what in my opinion are the real heroes; the swampers. Swampers always accompany the sawyers. They are the folks who drag heavy branches and large trunk pieces in sleds to the homeowner's curb for the city to pick up. Without them, everything I cut I trip over as I attempt to continue with my work. Consider for a moment that many of them take a week's vacation from their job to fly across the country to come help by dragging heavy wood endlessly back and forth over someones driveway and yard to the street. Those are the real heroes in my book.
Other than this little dent, the house is fine.
So this time I got deployed to Roswell New Mexico. Local floods made a mess of things, so muck outs were primarily the order of the day. 1400 structures and 400 homes were under 4 feet of water. You see, its not just Florida that has a problem.
Surprisingly, much of the city looked unaffected. But the homes by the banks of the river flooded. The force of the water was incredible. As seen in the following pics, they went over the banks and the bridge and folded steel posts.
Now look at the car below. It is missing its front bumper. It is in the tree in the background.
I found a lot of trauma in the people affected. I spoke to an older lady who told me that she spent 13 hours- from 7 PM until 8 AM- in the dark on her dining room table, until she was rescued, while she feared the rising water in her home would drown her. Reportedly, 145 people spent the night on the roof of the town civic center to escape the flood until they were rescued in the morning.
I know I have written about this, but it is still kind of hard to wrap your head around the damage a flood causes. Draw a line on the wall at your head height. Everything above it you can keep. Your ceiling lights maybe. We take everything below to the curb. Your beds, furniture, appliances, clothes, TV, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, computer, family pictures, your car, contents of your garage, absolutely everything. Then, we proceed to tear out your carpets, flooring, walls and insulation where mold is beginning to grow.
This is how a muck out starts. Everything
soaking wet, piled chest high.
Possessions cleaned out, now we remove a few inches of mud and carpet. Walls are next.
This is how it ends.
Click to see the video
You might not believe in flying saucers, but I saw a McDonalds with one.
Bear in mind that we were out in the middle of nowhere.
Finally, I flew home. But ten minutes after I arrived, I got a message not to unpack, as I was being re-deployed to Florida, where I am currently at...
Operation
Paradise Dawn
Ft. Meyers Florida
Other news of little use
I counted 46 Tesla recharging stations in a remote parking area of our local shopping center. Now if we can only find a single Tesla...
Secret stuff?
This is the entrance to a reportedly multi story underground 'bunker' where transpacific communication cables originate and terminate between China and other Asian countries and the US. It is located near our home here. Ironically, the original transatlantic cables between the US and Europe went to a terminal building not far from where our home was in Brittany, France also.
A remnant of the original transatlantic cable
(long since abandoned) as it met the shore.
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