Second Update

Operations for the first day focused almost exclusively on clearing local roads enough for emergency access. This does not mean that the roads are clear: frequently just enough of a fallen treetop was cleared to allow a rescue vehicle to pass through one lane. Some twisty and forested roads were like mouse mazes, swerving from this lane to that to take the tunnel cut through the next tree. Many roads remained completely impenetrable after the first day. 

The second day we continued access operations on the remaining roads, and began health and welfare checks in earnest. Up here the populations are mountain people and vacation/second-home people. 

Most of the mountain people had cleared their own roads, or hadn’t bothered because they didn’t need a road. Mountain families have extensive home-canned food and usually gravity-fed spring water. They own chainsaws; a surprising number of them own excavators, and thus an even larger number have kin or neighbors who do. I met one lady without a spring who cans water, ensuring a secure supply of clean water even if the creek fouls. These people have only two problems: some have family members with mental health issues, and some have extreme elderly who need oxygen concentrators or other powered medical equipment. They need gasoline for the saws and equipment, eventually, but the ones who have to keep a generator going are coming to a very hard decision. They will, however, be fine: the worst they face is grief for the few they may lose. We are focusing our efforts on trying to spare them that grief. 

The second-home people are happy and prosperous, and depend on stable social organizations like stores that take credit cards. They don’t realize how bad things may get if a way to get fuel in here doesn’t arise soon; more on that later. Some of them cleared their own roads by the happy expedient of having hired a local family as caretaker or groundskeeper of their property, and in this way another large chunk of work got done by someone other than the rescue service. 

Everyone we checked on was fine, including the dubious tent-campers-in-a-hurricane “where the sheriff got shot.” (The sheriff got shot nigh a hundred years ago, but everyone here knows exactly where that location in the backcountry is better than they would understand an address.)

Day three, today, we switched to actual clearing operations on the roads. Most of them are clear, all of them where we are aware of anyone living. We also continued health and welfare checks until 1700 local time. 

Starting at that time and until further notice, we are restricted to emergency operations only. “The present emergency,” which really is an emergency and a catastrophe, doesn’t count. 

We are nearly out of gasoline, you see. Even the emergency services. Diesel we’ve got for the big trucks, but gasoline is now almost gone. When it’s gone most county vehicles stop, including ambulances and police cars. Those generators powering the oxygen concentrators stop too. 

I hope the people working on that part of the problem have had as productive a last three days as we have. A lot hangs on whether or not more gasoline appears. If it doesn’t, the mountain folk will grieve, and a lot of other folk will learn about how hard life can get. 

We’ve done what we can where we are. If they have too, maybe it’ll still work out. 

There’s a Chinook. That’ll be the 30th Armored Brigade of the National Guard. I was with them in Iraq for a while in 2009. It’s funny how much this has been like that: rise at first light, shave by candlelight, gather for a mission briefing followed by a dawn patrol from the base to carry out your several missions. I was enjoying it, surprisingly so. It was sort of like the good-parts version of war. I hope we get some gasoline, so we don’t get the bad parts.