“The sun is a blessing to see right now,” said Statesboro Firefighter Calvin Hitchcock Thursday morning while touring the site of the temporary emergency response center at Ogeechee Technical College.
OTC served as a base of operation for the planning, management and financial logistics behind the resources deployed to Bulloch County during the storm.
Hitchcock has been working with GEMA for about 18 years as a support resource for natural disasters and other major events. During Tropical Storm Debby, Hitchcock was requested as a support for Georgia’s Incident Management Team, charged with managing resources and aiding local emergency responders to “help bring some of the weight off of their shoulders.”
“In this scenario we are actually managing all of these water aspects as far as swift water rescues, swift water recoveries… evacuating of homes, that kind of thing. We brought in boats, we brought in teams, and they are stationed here [Ogeechee Technical College]. We deploy them out as needed,” said Hitchcock.
Due to flooding over the last three days, they have assisted in a total of 28 rescues around Bulloch County, helping mostly elderly and disabled people that could not get out during normal evacuations. Hitchcock reported no injuries during the rescues.
Hitchcock says that the storm did not bring as severe of winds as could have been expected, which would have raised greater risks for downing power lines and pushing trees over into residents' homes, yet the flooding was more significant.
“I think the flooding really came a lot harder than everybody expected. The ponds couldn’t take it, it's a chain event. You start losing one dam and you lose another one. Water’s got to go somewhere,” said Hitchcock, “Fortunately I think we have crossed the threshold of more dams losing.”
Georgia Search and Rescue resources from Perry and Columbus Georgia were brought in by the State Operation Center as an extension of GEMA resources, and were readied to support operations in Savannah as needed.
Hitchcock says they were requested to stand prepared to help, as is common with severe storms. “We bring folks in to be in front of it,” he said.
Daniel Macon, Deputy Chief of Operations for Columbus Fire and EMS, led a 16 man Swiftwater rescue team from Columbus, Georgia. The team was requested by the state EMA office to help prepare a forward operating base for incidents throughout the storm.
“Once we arrived, they gave me an eight man team from Perry, Georgia to attach to my team and I was assigned task force leader,” said Macon.
“Over the last three and a half days, we have just went in and assisted in rescues and evacuation of personnel and elderly and disabled people,” said Macon. “Up to this point, our last call was late last night and since then, the waters have been receding and we are now being demobilized.”
He reported that many of the evacuations took place along Sinkhole Road and Cypress Lake Road, especially in more vulnerable residencies like mobile home parks and homes near bodies of water.
“Some team members were on boats, some were just, in the water, the water was so swift… it was only a few of them, the water was 12-18 inches deep, knee deep,” he said. “We had a few elderly patients that were in wheelchairs so we ended up having to carry them out just because they couldn’t go through the water.”
Macon says that in managing these rescues, local resources would connect to the Emergency Management Agency to report crises that they were incapable of responding to. The swiftwater teams were then contacted directly by the state EMA and were dispatched from OTC to various locations affected by the storm.
“We ran from 2 am all the way until 5 pm [Wednesday],” said Macon, “We were going to areas that didn’t have street lighting, we were worried about downed power lines, we were worried about flooding… it ended up being kind of a tricky situation but we managed our way through.”
“They really appreciated it. Like I said, the people that we assisted and helped wouldn’t have been able to do it, and I think us being here helped the local resources so they wouldn’t be overtaxed,” he said. “We were just an extension of their departments.”
Alongside the swiftwater rescue teams and the mobile command center, the agriculture department sent in an animal rescue squad that thankfully did not need to deploy.
Final assessments of the damages to homes in the area have not yet been released, but estimates are around 200 total residences, with many mobile home units potentially totalled due to flooding reaching the flooring, as well as severe damage to the first levels of multi-story dwellings.
The Grice Connect team joins our community in expressing our gratitude for their heroic service in helping so many of our citizens during this difficult time.
