Highland Park High School Class of 1963

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Highland Park High School Class of 1963 - COVID Chat

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Body:	<i>I've been a disaster volunteer since 2002. Not usually a hammer and tools guy or a chainsaw guy; that would be easier. I've been an organizer at the state and county level, often both at the same time. Major disasters in which I've served: --April 2011 tornadoes in Wake County: I was leading the county disaster recovery group. We invited recovery teams from other places into the county and found groups to house and feed them. We raised money for supplies for people with inadequate insurance and government loans and grants and we recruited teams (of varying skill levels) to provide the labor. I was still working then, and although my boss was generous in allowing time off to work on disaster tasks, I never got to bed before midnight. I refer to that as the disaster that took a year out of my life. --October 2016 is when Hurricane Matthew hit North Carolina. 44 of the 100 counties received a federal disaster declaration. My job was working 12-hour shifts in the state Emergency Operations Center, making sure that volunteer groups were balanced across the areas of need--no area underserved or overserved. Also responding to individual requests and providing data and statistics when required. Not to mention managing and/or recording minutes for coordination calls that started daily and ended up bi-weekly. And training volunteer groups in the affected counties how to organize. This activity also stretched out to a year or so, although the reconstruction is still continuing. The Governor saw fit to grant me the Order of the Long Leaf Pine for this effort. The Order of the Long Leaf Pine is an honor granted by the State of North Carolina to individuals who have shown extraordinary service to the state. It is the highest award for state service granted by the Office of the Governor. In September 2018, just 23 months after Matthew, Hurricane Florence struck North Carolina with far more damage than Matthew had caused. Only about half the matthew-damaged homes that needed volunteer repair had been completed. And some volunteers had the heartbreaking task of tearing out flooded drywall they had installed just two weeks earlier. The Florence response required most of the same tasks as Matthew, but fortunately I had trained a small cadre of reliable volunteers to do my roles, so I could actually breathe and split my roles in the state and county Emergency Operations Centers. You know what they say about complacency. About the time I was really feeling good about the recovery, in September 2019, Hurricane Dorian arrived. You know how when you look at a map of North Carolina, you see that tiny string of islands parallel to the coast? They are called 'barrier islands,' a little leftover from when the tectonic plates moved. The northern part is called the Outer Banks. And a spot that's furthest from the coast is Okracoke, a three-hour ferry ride from the mainland. It has 800 homes. A four-foot wall of water washed completely over the island, flooding 400 of them. Just getting supplies and teams in was an exercise. The county sheriff stationed deputies at the ferry dock to make sure the teams and construction supplies got on board first. And of course, now we have COVID-19. Working with the same folks, but all of us (except certain volunteers) are working from home. We have websites and phone numbers (also available across the country) where people can report their needs: shopping pickup and delivery, prescription pickup and delivery, regular wellness checks (by phone), regular meal delivery, personal protective equipment (masks, gloves), and pet supplies pickup and delivery. Volunteer groups pull these requests from a database and fulfill them. My first job was to publicize this service across the state and county, and to recruit groups to fulfill the requests. That is running pretty smoothly and now I am crunching statistics from the database to make sure no area in North Carolina is ignored. By the way, the reporting service is available nationwide, by calling 800-451-1954 or visiting https://coronacommunity.org Â or https://stayneighbor.com . If you work with a volunteer group and would like to handle some of these tasks, visit https://crisiscleanup.org . Larry</i> *
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