Leif Erikson Day

Today marks the holiday celebrating Nordic heritage in America; also, jointly with Columbus Day, celebrating the spirit of exploration.

Many believe that roughly a millennium ago, Leif Erikson — a Norse explorer — and his crew were the first Europeans to reach the shores of North America.  His spirit of adventure, curiosity, and resilience would inspire generations of Danes, Finns, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes to sail across an ocean and begin new lives in America.  These immigrants built bustling homes and enriched their communities, supporting and realizing the American Dream.  They fought for our freedoms in the military; built new churches, businesses, and schools; and spearheaded social movements.  Today, Nordic communities continue to enrich the fabric of the Nation. 

Congress needs to step up

From American's Newspaper of Record.

I kid, really. I'm not yet convinced of the stories about FEMA blocking humanitarian aid. Not that I think they'd hesitate if someone pointed out that a blank had been left in an 80-page application: they might not do it to exact revenge on a lot of mouth-breathing alt-right hillbillies, but they'd certainly feel justified in some kind of safety-first protocol stretched insanely out of proportion to the emergency circumstances. FEMA is very comfortable dealing with other huge, sclerotic bureaucracies. They seem to lack the faintest clue what first and second responders need to do, and everyone is probably lucky if they hog some of the last few decent short-term rental spaces available and sit by their phones awaiting orders. A few years from now, some of them may be dispensing some helpful aid to strapped local governments.

UPDATE: After reading Thomas Doubting's linked blog account of another NC mountain community's experience, I'm thinking I judged all of FEMA too harshly. They must have some people who aren't pointy-headed bureaucrats. Not that any of them came to my county, as far as I know. The one FEMA bigwig who addressed my Commissioners Court made me angrier than I've often been in my life, and spurred me to run for office.

Testing newfound ability to add images using Chrome instead of Brave, here is a dog we rescued last year, on her way home from being spayed. She was successfully treated for heartworms and adopted by a couple with a dog so similar they swear they are brother and sister from the same litter reunited:

Another Benghazi narrowly averted?

I don't like to jump to conclusions about single-source stories, but this one seems like a pretty sober, detailed account.

Forty U.S. Army soldiers who were in Israel as the advance team for what they thought was a routine training exercise last October 7 suddenly found themselves in the middle of a war, unarmed, and being forced to beg reluctant Pentagon officials to send an Air Force plane to extract them.

Approximately a quarter of the soldiers were just miles from Gaza in off-base housing near the IDF’s Tze’elim base when the attack began. A group of local Israelis – IDF reservists, police officers, and ordinary citizens – got them to the base, which Hamas terrorists were quickly heading toward. With his men in mortal danger, the U.S. team leader requested permission to open the arms locker so they could retrieve their firearms but was denied at the US Central Command level and “denied and/or ignored” at a level above that, according to a military intelligence analyst with knowledge of the mission and exfiltration.

Glitch?

Apparently I can post here, but I can't comment. All I get is "failed to publish, try again later."

"Disaster Equity"

Apparently this is what FEMA is doing instead of coming out here. 

That's ok. Like I said in the comments, we haven't missed them. Private, volunteer, and local efforts did almost everything; we did have a little help from State DOT that was appreciated. If they hadn't come either, though, we could have handled that too: a surprising number of people up here own what Thomas' post calls "track hoes," more commonly known as excavators. A lot of the heavy work was done by these private citizens with their own resources. Chainsaws are likewise nearly universal here, and generators of one sort or another aren't uncommon as power outages are fairly regular occurrences as trees get dropped on lines or transformers. 

They don't usually last for more than a week, almost two weeks now for those still without power. This commentary reflecting on what happens when the electricity dies is worth reading. For me, the loss of power was probably a healthy experience: earlier to bed and earlier to rise, plenty of hard work, and thus I probably physically improved overall. 

For our neighbors who are on oxygen, however, it's a potential death sentence to lose power to their oxygen concentrators. As I mentioned in an early post, this has been a major focus of ours: so far, I don't think we have lost even one of them. I would not have predicted that ten days ago.

For others, the darkness is depressing and maddening. Boredom is also a common complaint: it's hard to read by candlelight, and all the usual diversions were gone. The only person who told me that he and his female companion were "suffering" had those kinds of psychological complaints: she was having "panic attacks" because of the early darkness; he was probably mostly suffering from having to be cooped up with her, I would ungenerously speculate based on our brief encounter. It's hard for me not to push those sorts of complaints into the category of "whining," which is forbidden in my house -- my only two rules for my son, growing up, were "No Whining" and "Grow Stronger" -- but I suppose that psychological misery is perhaps the worst kind. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter; but if you do, if you really do, it really does, at least to you. I guess that's a kind of standard for equity.

I was glad to see our local EMC's trucks yesterday and today. The EMC apparently sent its trucks to Florida to pre-position for Helene, which was certain to hit there but not certain to hit here. That's part of why it took so long for power to get back up here: they were busy in Florida, and others had to come from elsewhere until they could return. Today I've seen quite a few of them running around while I was testing out my new motorcycle tire. 

Hopefully they'll be able to get the power back on for those still without it. Frankly I'm impressed with them: I expected some of these places to be a month or more given the amount of damage, but they report 90% of their customers back online. That includes some remote farms so far back in the woods that I didn't know they existed -- or sometimes even that the trails that lead to those homes existed -- until this rescue effort began. Bless the linemen, because they're carrying a tremendous amount of weight. 

More Reports from NC

I've posted links to several first-hand reports by a ham radio operator named Thomas in Buncombe County. These seem to be a good second viewpoint on the situation. Grim has the rescuer / responder view covered and is quite busy with it all. Thomas has more time to write detailed reports and post photos.

Thomas has two more out discussing how his local community came together, the various kinds of help they've gotten (volunteer, local, FEMA, NC National Guard, etc.) and various rumors that are running around.

One Week Report

Community, Coordination, and Misinformation

In the second report here he also talks about disaster tourism and why some people claiming to be volunteers have been turned away from his area.

Update: Here are the earlier reports from Thomas.

Alas for the Bobarosa

One of the great biker bars died in the storm, down as it was on the shoulders of the Pigeon river. 

Another of the greats, Mauhuffers of Indian Beach, is gravely threatened by the next storm. 

October 7

I’ve been a little busy lately, and it’s no surprise that I have lost track of time. Still, we ought to mark the anniversary of the brutal attack of last year, when perfectly innocent people were killed by Hamas in what amounts to an act of blood magic, an attempt to conjure a final reckoning with Israel and probably an attempt to bring about the end of the world— to provoke the End Times according to their particular theory of Islamic eschatology. 

Reportedly Iran tested an atomic weapon on the 5th of this year. Definitely there was a seismic event there. 

Lepanto

 Today marks the 453rd anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, where Christian naval forces turned back the Ottomans in a decisive battle.  One interesting note is that Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was one of the soldiers on the ships, and apparently acquitted himself well in the battle.  It also marks the feast of the Holy Rosary, as Pope Pius V called for all of Europe to pray the Rosary for victory, and he then attributed the victory to the Rosary and pilgrimage.

Chesterton memorialized the battle in a poem- "Lepanto"

The first verse:

Lepanto

By G. K. Chesterton

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Running the Wheels Off

We have no functional spares, but hopefully as things calm down we will have time to replace things. I swapped the last one on the Wolf Mountain run a few days ago. Not only department vehicles but personal ones have been ridden hard and put away wet. 

For example, I think I got the good out of this motorcycle tire. 

I’ve been on it every day since we got the roads clear enough to ride. I’ve also been through two pair of boots, two saw chains, and a bar. Not that the boots nor the saw nor the tire were new, though one of the saw chains was. 

UPDATE: 

We must be doing all right if the community is bringing us pound cakes. 

Lasagna too; some Italian-American woman who lives here brought us a great one. I happened upon her the next day on patrol and complimented her lasagna highly; when I got back to the station several hours later, I found she’d dropped off six more. 

In Praise of Starlink

Ten days ago I woke to a world without power. All the cell towers had been knocked down. The 911 center was out. All roads were impassable. Landlines were flooded and inoperable. There was no communication at all, not by ground, not by wire, except for the handheld radio that let me communicate with other members of the fire/rescue squad. With chainsaws we began the work of opening the ground lines of communication, and by the end of the day we had at least linked up with each other. 

Once we got to the station, though, we had Starlink. Hooked to a truck, powered by that truck's own diesel engine, the Starlink system worked in the worst hours of the disaster. As long as you were standing by the truck, you could make calls, you could get to the internet. We could communicate with family, and as we opened the roads, we could drive that truck around the district to let people reach out and let their own family know they had survived. 

Generously, Starlink is extending its efforts to help in North Carolina, but I am already grateful to them just for providing their normal service. When nothing else worked, they were dependable. It reminded me of Sam's realization, walking through Mordor, that the stars were ever above Sauron's power, untouchable and pure. Likewise Helene could knock down every cell tower, every power line, and so many trees that you could not at first move: but she couldn't touch the stars, nor the satellites. 

MREs

They aren’t really. They’re much more digestible than the things we give out soldiers and Marines to eat. But they do have a similar heating mechanism. 

Not as much protein as they should have, in my opinion, but not terrible as emergency rations. 

The Last Word on Moral Philosophy

"Waste no more time debating what is a good man: be one." 

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations X

Today I moved seven generators and an oven. Two of the places we could use a truck and a trailer to reach, including to a mule farm with very little need for electricity at all. One we could still reach with the trailer, but only detached from the truck and attached to a Polaris Ranger instead. It only carried two, so I rode in the trailer holding on to the generators as we bounced over the mud trail, secure in the knowledge that I had tied the rescue knots lashing them to the frame myself. The last one we had to reach with just the Ranger, so I had to deadlift the generators into it to ferry one by one. We left the third guy with the truck.

I spent a large part of my life studying philosophy, including moral philosophy. Indeed, it was moral philosophy that first caught my attention: I was greatly taken by Plato's dialogues, beginning with the Laches, in which we were all invited to participate in the ancient discussions about what it means to be good and virtuous. Plato invites everyone, but especially in his most famous middle dialogues makes it seem as if it's hard to come to an answer; in his later dialogues, like the Laws, he makes it seem clear but his answers are ludicrous. 

Aristotle developed an answer in the Nicomachean Ethics that was broadly satisfying for more than a thousand years. The Stoics refined and improved upon it, but their model of virtue is basically Aristotelian. 

Aristotle also provided the best scientific writing for many generations, but his scientific writings were proven inaccurate in many ways by the late Medievals and early Moderns. Thinking that his moral philosophy was also as flawed, modern thinkers have tried to either refound it on reason -- like Kant or Rawls -- or to replace it -- like Marx or Bentham. 

All of those projects have been as ridiculous as Plato in his late phase, which is not to scorn them: they were, like he was, operating at the top of humanity's intellectual capacity. Studying them likewise is not a useless endeavor, as it allows you to approach an understanding of how and why the later models were flawed. 

Ultimately, however, there are no secrets remaining in moral philosophy. There is no reason to hold a week-long seminar, or a three-day retreat, or a day-long debate. We know how to be good, how to be virtuous, and what we ought to do. If you don't know, you should know. 

The hard part is doing it. If a course in moral philosophy leads to men who worry over abstracts of 'justice' or 'right' or 'duty,' sitting in libraries or lecture halls, it has failed. If it leads to men who know how to tie rescue knots and tourniquets, and who stand ready to apply CPR or work a chainsaw to clear a road, it has succeeded. 

I guess I had good teachers, starting with my father who set the example for me. I came across Aristotle early and Marcus Aurelius late, but they were right all along.

More Ham Radio in North Carolina

As the video points out, in an emergency when life or property are at risk, anyone can use a ham radio.

Third Update

There's still no power, but at least for now some of the cellular towers are running. Coverage is unstable, as towers sometimes go back down again. For those with generators, internet access has reappeared in some places as the phone company's lines are mostly buried and were less heavily damaged. (The phone company technician's name is Joe. He's a good guy.)

As described before, the first 48 hours our operations were focused on opening the roads just enough to get to people in far flung homes. We helped a few families even while the storm was raging, especially those who had trees fall through their roof, but getting to them was the hard part at first. Every road was impassable, hundreds of trees were down across them.

By Friday morning the cellular networks were all down. 911 was also down. We had to go out to find the people who needed help. Cutting trees and throwing the pieces was most of what I did on Friday and Saturday. As we opened access to vulnerable people in the community, we brought them oxygen cylinders or generators to power life-saving equipment like oxygen concentrators. By Sunday we had a county saw team to help, and we mostly cleared the mountain roads up here by nightfall Sunday.

By Monday we could expand our sweeps from known vulnerable people and homes that had obvious physical damage to elderly citizens who might need extra help. Patrols dispatched multiple times a day in each of several directions went through different regions of the district, distributing water and food to the very old and those with young children.

The first law enforcement showed up Monday as well; up until then it had mostly been volunteer firefighters, technical rescuers like me, and the county groundskeepers who became our saw team. Two deputies appeared on Monday and returned Tuesday with some more. Today the Sheriff was here, as well as two members of the National Guard.

Starting yesterday we began an effort to contact everyone in the district, to distribute food, water, gasoline, and information about how to obtain further aid at a time when ordinary forms of communication are down.

Today I took a patrol out to Wolf Mountain and talked to every person who lives on it. It had several of the last "black" roads, places we had not been able to go to at all. I think we are very close to 100% accountability on citizens; so far, I'm not aware of anyone who has died in our district, neither from the storm nor from the aftermath without power or the ability to obtain food (or water, for those with well pumps but not generators). There are some missing still that we are searching for, however. My team found one yesterday, who had broken her hip, but she is ok and receiving treatment.

The communities up here have pulled together beautifully for the most part, and are supporting each other with minimal need for outside assistance. I'm proud of them.

Reports from North Carolina

A ham radio operator caught in the storm in Swannanoa, Buncombe County, NC, has posted reports and photos on his blog. He has solar and a satellite connection. It seems his community is cut off, but making do.

Aftermath - 9/28/2024

Long Update - 9/30/2024

The ham radio technician license exam is pretty easy, and the general license is only slightly more difficult. Technician gives you UHF and VHF privileges; a small handheld radio that can connect with a repeater can communicate around 50 miles. That license also gives you a slice of HF, the 10-meter band. An HF radio about the size of a CB radio can communicate worldwide in the right conditions. The general license opens up a great deal of the HF frequencies and much more flexible communications.

Rest in Peace, Kris Kristofferson

I was sad to hear, belatedly no doubt, of this great singer songwriter passing. There are tremendous stories about him; I don’t have time to relate. Look them up. They’re worth your while. 

Dawn over Cimmeria

Several shots from the same location at dawn, showing how the Smoky Mountains raise a fog with the first solar energy. Before dawn the stars were clear. 

The National Guard is supposed to be sending a squad up here today. We saw the first law enforcement officers yesterday, five days in to the business. The school system turned its fuel over to emergency services, so we are still running patrols to vulnerable families. Today we are planning a full sweep of the district to advise everyone of what aid is available and how to access it, as power, cellular towers, phones and internet remain down. 

UPDATE: The National Guard did not in fact appear; apparently a paperwork error at the State Capitol sent them somewhere else. No word on if that might get straightened out. 

One Way to Help

 When Kentucky was flooded a while back, the guys at Stocking Mill Coffee put together a 'strike team' of relief, and headed up and helped people out- no big NGO, no overhead, just dudes helping people who needed it.  They're at it again, and I trust them to put my dollars to good use up there.  The CEO is a vet and a "get it done" kind of guy, so the right man for the job.  They are targeting the area between Spartanburg and Ashville, and that seems like a good target zone for the operation.  I offer this as I know many here share my distrust of the big NGOs, and as I mentioned, I trust these guys.  Link to their donation site.

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.