Latest / Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement / #139- "Tropical Storm Edouard: Texas Prepared for the Worst" with Robby Campbell & Leighton Guarnere

Transcript

#139- "Tropical Storm Edouard: Texas Prepared for the Worst" with Robby Campbell & Leighton Guarnere · Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh it wasn't gonna get bad.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: The problem was while we're at Lumberton High School when Rita hit, the roof started coming off with all of us in it.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: And you talk about scary.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: That was pretty scary.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh then we had to, after it was over with, we had to chainsaw our way out of Lumberton all the way back down to South Jefferson County.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back, viewers, watchers, listeners.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Tyler O, and this week we are joined by Zoom.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: Quite frankly, because of some storm situations going on there in the Golden Triangle.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: I have with me Leighton Ganary and Robbie Campbell both serving the Houston and Golden Triangle angle, excuse me, Golden Triangle Area.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Um we wanted to jump on real quick and kind of give, as Leighton's laughing at me for for messing up the verbiage on my on my intro here, uh, we wanted to jump on and kind of give an update on this tropical storm that made landfall in the Golden Triangle area, kind of what our members are doing, what they're doing, and kind of a regional update.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: We also got some POAs that are in meet and confer situations and contract negotiations going on.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: These two guys are extremely busy.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh both are gonna be traveling into Austin uh for some other opportunities with TNPA.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: So we won't dive into that, but we're gonna talk about what's going on in the region.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Robbie Leighton, appreciate you jumping in, man.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: You bet, brother.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Anytime, anytime.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Layton, uh this storm, Robbie, you're more, I guess, at the center of it or was uh when it made landfall.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: Give us kind of an update of what's going on in your region and kind of what your members are telling us and really how how the storm we really dodged a bullet, quite frankly.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Had it started earlier uh in the week and probably transitioned more into the Gulf as it made landfall, it probably would have made more significant impact.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're right.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: If it's if it had spent a couple more days, like four days out in the Gulf, this would have been a pretty catastrophic event for our area.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: Yet again, you live on the Gulf Coast, you come to expect things like that.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: That's nothing new to us.
1:55
SPEAKER_02: It's pretty much become a way of life, uh, which is I hate to say that, but you take a risk living down here.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, so it spun up really quickly.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: It was being monitored the last couple of days.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: They made us uh they they really was pushing out on social media and television to pay attention to what's going on.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: And we did, of course, but uh it wasn't expected to be what it actually turned out to be, which I mean, I guess to a certain extent it was, but this is a humongous rain generator uh for uh Orange County, Jefferson County, Chambers County.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: Uh who's really getting hammered today is is uh Harvey County, Polk County, Trinity County, uh Walker's gonna probably take a pretty good lashing of it in Tyler County, all the counties above Orange County, the Gulf Coast counties, uh they're they've getting dirt, they've gotten a lot of rain.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: Probably plan to get, I would imagine, 20 more inches of rain according to the weather updates, which is a tremendous amount of rain.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Layton, you you have have worked for TMPA for quite some time, and you're no stranger to tropical storms and hurricanes.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Give us kind of a perspective of what TNPA field reps do preparing for these type of events.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: You've coordinated uh disaster response before, I believe, with Ike and Rita.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Of course, this is not to that magnitude, but kind of give us an insight of what TNPA does preparing for situations like this and kind of what our response would be had we needed to employ that special response team for this uh these these storms.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, throughout the years, actually, Ike and and and Rita, I was still a working cop on the streets.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but there's been some more that's hit since then uh while I worked at, you know, while I've worked at TMPA.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh usually the way that we do it, me and Robbie just so happen we're really good friends.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: So uh before you know either one of us worked here.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: Um so I know uh even though I don't live in the Golden Triangle anymore, I live just right outside of it over to Chambers County.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh so usually if something's gonna hit the upper uh Texas Gulf Coast, it's gonna affect me and Robbie.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: So usually me and Robbie coordinate with each other, uh, and then we both coordinate with all of our POA leaderships and all of our contacts at uh you know cities and counties that border the Gulf Coast.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: One thing that you got to realize is this time of the year, uh the upper Texas Gulf Coast, they're prepared for two things.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: That's football and hurricanes.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh so guys usually have preparedness, especially uh guys in law enforcement.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: They usually have go bags, you know, they have to worry about their families too to get their families out of town, depending on uh the size of the storm or whatever, and then uh then we go from there.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: But usually uh, you know, me and Robbie will talk to each other, we'll coordinate with with our locals, and then we'll we'll send that information back to Austin.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And then it's a play it by ear.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: We get everything ready.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh, usually, you know, we'll we'll get our contacts outside the region ready because we've leaned on Dallas and Houston in the past uh to help out, and then we start looking for areas, depending on where that landfall is gonna happen and the size of the storm, we're gonna start looking for uh some type of place where we're gonna uh you know put our put our base camp at, you know, and and and get ready to roll and then see how many people's able to respond.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Usually all the field reps are good about responding and helping with the emergency response.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but in the past, we've we've used uh you know board members, um uh officers outside the region, however much help that we think that we need for an event, that's what we're gonna do.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think it's really a kind of an opportunity for us to unfortunately highlight we we don't do it enough, uh, is TMPA charities.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, for the for the average cop out there, Layton, Robbie, and and and myself included, we get those devastating phone calls that we don't want to, you know, discuss and we don't want to face, but it's those phone calls that, man, I'm down here in in Beaumont, I'm down here in Jefferson County, and my my entire home has been wiped out.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea, you know, how we're gonna rebuild or what we're gonna do.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's important because TNPA charities is able to step in, not suggesting that we're able to rebuild somebody's you know entire house or replace a vehicle, but it's the small things that matter.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: And I just can't put it out there for every, we have 35,000 members.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: If each member donated$5 a month, the funds for that, uh, which our PACs also kind of included for that donation, but that's where we're able to respond and provide the necessities, you know, food, water, socks, t-shirts, the basic necessities that people kind of overlook during storms like this.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: And both of you uh have responded and provided those kind of necessities during some of these storms and during tragic, you know, tragic events.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Robbie, if you want to pick this up and just talk about the impact of TMPA charities, it's one of the most rewarding things we can do as field reps, quite honestly.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh give us a kind of idea of kind of how that looks.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a very good thing.
7:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh I'm at, you know, we do a lot of, for instance, stuff.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we talk about, for instance, uh, we had an officer that's uh house burnt down, and we we went and gave him uh they were displaced, of course.
7:11
SPEAKER_02: We kind of get them set up in a hotel for temporarily time until they get insurance in order, things like that.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: Officers that are, of course, hurt in the line of duty or have family direct, you know, immediate family members that are hurting line of duty.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: We get some some resources to them as quick as we can.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: That's our priority.
7:25
SPEAKER_02: Our membership is our priority.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: But that's one of the good things that the uh the uh charities is for for us.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: That's actually what charities is for for us.
7:34
SPEAKER_02: So uh that's really really beneficial.
7:37
SPEAKER_02: And uh our conference is a big generator of funds for that, as well as regular membership uh donations, which is on the back of the application card if you want to make contributions every month.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: And$5 goes a long way.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: Uh I hate to sound like one of those commercials you see on television when you're watching your favorite sports event or or a movie, but this is this is where it really comes down to stop filter through.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: None of the money goes for salaries, none of the money goes for anything else, but back to membership in a time of crisis.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Hey, hey, hey, and to piggyback off, piggyback off of what Robbie said, it's not just the Gulf Coast.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you if you remember the Bash trop wildfires, uh wildfires up in the you know, panhandle, tornadoes up in North Texas, the Kerrville floods, the flash floods in Kerrville.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you name it, all the disasters we respond to, and we lean heavily on you know charities money that comes in.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, it's just it it it's a it's a good reward for us uh emotionally.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh Clint talks about one specific deal late, and I think you were responding to a hurricane.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: And what what Clint kind of always goes back to is a story that he was literally driving uh down the road in the moral truck, trying, you know, trying to deliver some socks and and t-shirts, and and there was a young 28-year-old deputy uh that basically broke down with Clint and basically said, I don't even know where my family's at.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what I'm walking back to.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: Completely broke down, and all he wanted was fresh socks.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Layton, I think you were there that time.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Go back to one of these hurricanes or special events that you can remember distinctly of remembering, man, I don't have the ability, or excuse me, you you you don't do the job you once did as a cop, but you still continue a life of service through TNPA.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Give us an example of kind of one of those incidences that that you personally have kind of gone through.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, har Harvey is Harvey, you know, comes to mind right off the top of the head because it was such a devastating storm.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: And it and it we we had a lot of people don't realize, you know, TNPA had two different areas that we were in.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: One one group was staged down on the uh Gulf Coast, down towards uh basically the coastal bend area, and then you had the other group that was based uh down in Port Natchez.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: And and to see the response from all around the state, heck, even outside the state.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were having trailers of of refrigerated food, socks, I mean, everything you can think of, the necessities.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh now those guys are they're you know, guys that are in the affected areas that are cops and first responders, they're they're dealing, they're dealing with trying to help people, but also in the back of their mind, they don't even know what their own house, their family, there's all these emotions that they're going through.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: So just to see people show up to lend a hand, you know, we we can't solve all the problems, but just that little bit of refreshing that, hey, we got your back, we're here for you, uh, a shoulder to lean on, uh, is huge.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: No, that's a great point.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: That's a great point.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, again, we uh we can we somewhat dodged the bullet with this tropical storm, uh, and thank God it's moving through and it's continuing to dump rain on the region, which I think you guys, it's it's kind of much needed, my understanding.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: I was looking at some of the weather reports earlier in um East Texas that it's their their rainfall has elevated this summer, but you know, you can't you can't shy away with rainfall and Texas needs it, especially for those crops.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: But hey, I want to transition to something else too.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Robbie Layton, feel free to one of y'all just jump in and go first.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: But Robbie, you've got some you've got some orange, orange PoA, uh, some some some contracts, uh kind of upcoming contracts.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: Give us kind of a regional overview of what's going on in the Golden Triangle, and then Layton will follow up with you with Houston area.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: I'll say this uh a long time, over 20 years.
11:36
SPEAKER_02: And yesterday was the first time I've ever bargained a contract while a tropical storm is actually making landfall right in our in our backyard, and that was at Orange PD.
11:44
SPEAKER_02: Um, we made some good progress.
11:45
SPEAKER_02: We hadn't reached a deal yet, but we made good progress with Orange PD.
11:49
SPEAKER_02: All the other Golden Triangle uh affiliates of TMPA have uh have gotten really good.
11:54
SPEAKER_02: This has been a good contract year.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: They've gotten really good uh salary increases that benefit the officers as well as the uh the communities they represent.
12:01
SPEAKER_02: So this has been a good year for for us as far as contracts go, collective bargaining agreements go.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh Orange County, uh we kind of got a semi-deal going with them for now.
12:11
SPEAKER_02: Uh they're paying attention to some things that's going on in Jefferson County, uh, but they've agreed to give their their deputies uh some pay to kind of fill up the ranks and get them through for now, which is uh we're grateful for that.
12:23
SPEAKER_02: But uh yeah, Neederland grows Port Natchez, uh Bridge City, even Pinehurst, uh Orange PD, West Orange PD, all those all those associations got really good uh good contracts this year.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: Good.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Layden, got the update on your region?
12:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, between me and Robbie, we have over 20 bargaining cities and counties, which is quite a bit.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: And that's in that southeast Houston area over towards Robbie and the Golden Triangle.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh my area didn't have as many cities uh up for uh bargaining this year, but uh we're hacking at it.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh Morgan's Point is one of our newer uh or is the newest city with uh collective bargaining.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: We ran that referendum back in May in one, and uh we're working through it.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it's it's been a little difficult.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: Um I think the city's never bargained before, so it's a learning curve for them.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh but but we're working through it.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh Dickinson is another one where uh they're having some finance problems, city finance problems.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: In fact, their their uh new budget coming up is actually cutting um some positions within the city.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: I know the assistant city manager has been cut out of the budget and a couple other positions.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: So uh that's that's a place where we're trying to work with the city.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, we don't want officers laid off or nothing like that.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: So uh we're working through that there.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: Chambers County got a real good contract.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh that was the ones that were kind of up this year.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh next year we'll we'll have a bunch of more, but uh that's that's the gist of the collector bargaining in my area this year.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Cool, cool.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't want to take up too much of y'all's time, uh, but is there anything else that you guys want to cover, Robbie?
14:14
SPEAKER_02: No, I well, I would like to shout out uh so this storm, just talk about the storm for a little bit, just a little bit more, because it was kind of unusual how it how it acted.
14:22
SPEAKER_02: It was supposed to, you know, when a storm's overwater, it generates a lot of power and force, things like that.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: That's where you get the wind and rain.
14:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, but as this thing hit landfall, it actually got stronger over land, which is unusual.
14:34
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that's what caused the wind gust of 90 miles an hour in certain places, and uh, which we had here, uh, not sustained winds, just gust, right?
14:43
SPEAKER_02: So there's a difference between that.
14:44
SPEAKER_02: That's why it didn't get to Hurricane 1 level.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: It has to be, I think, rated 70, 74 miles an hour, something like that.
14:50
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but yeah, shout out to uh Gulf Coast Weather Solutions, my good friend Johnny Lively, Lucas Balswick, and uh the godfather of weather in the golden triangle, Greg Balswick.
15:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh, if they say it it's gonna happen, we pay attention to them for all these storms.
15:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh, that's our go-to.
15:05
SPEAKER_02: So thanks, thanks for them for doing what they do.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: We certainly appreciate it.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: Can you guys kind of go over?
15:12
SPEAKER_00: I didn't work in Southeast Texas, and and and hurrican the word hurricane is kind of a common practice within kind of what y'all do.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Give us kind of an insight real quick, as when thinking back when you guys were on patrol, what did cops, how do cops prepare to kind of go through that?
15:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm kind of processing this myself, going, man, um, you know, packing my family up and getting ready for a bad storm.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: You guys have to stay, right, for through the whole storm, which is why we serve our members and why we do what we do when we respond for the disaster relief.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: But talk about kind of what if if if a cop in Dallas is listening to this podcast or a cop in you know Lubbock, Texas, kind of give us a run through of kind of how that operates and what you're preparing as the days ahead.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: Um you want me to go first?
15:55
SPEAKER_01: I'll go first real quick.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: So when you think about when you think back just real quick, uh our our area got lucky over the years, probably while me and Robbie were younger.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we did get hit by a couple of hurricanes, but what changed the whole dynamics was whenever Katrina hit New Orleans.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh, unfortunately, I had family that was affected by that.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, my birthplace is Flackham's Parish, and it came right up, right up the Mississippi River right there.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: So everything, everybody watched what happened in during Katrina and the devastation of Katrina.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, right after that was Rita coming in.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest with you, back when Rita, that was 05 in 2005, uh, you know, county emergency management, uh, city officials, county officials, they weren't prepared.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think Robbie would agree with this because Robbie was a cop during that time too.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we didn't know what we were gonna do.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: And I was down in Groves, and first of all, we were supposed to have a fallback point to the port of Beaumont.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: They were gonna put us all on ships, and they were gonna put the ship down down on the bottom of the of the port, is basically what they were talking about doing.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, then they changed the plan at the last minute, and Port Arthur and all of Mid County down there uh had to go to Lumberton High School, which they felt like that was far enough back to where uh it wasn't gonna get bad.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: The problem was while we're at Lumberton High School, when Rita hit, the roof started coming off with all of us in it.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: And you talk about scary.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: That was pretty scary.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Uh then we had to, after it was over with, we had to chainsaw our way out of Lumberton all the way back down to South Jefferson County.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh and when we got back, there was no generators.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: Back then, hardly anybody had generators, and so I worked night shift and we were sleeping on school buses.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: And if you remember, Rita, during that time, it was 93, 94 degrees outside during the daytime.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: So all of us night shift guys were having to sleep on a school bus with no air condition, with the windows down, and it was brutal.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: It was bad.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Rita was bad, but after that, everybody started learning how to deal with it.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Generators started coming in for all the city and county offices, plans started getting better, and uh the storm they have storm windows now, stuff like that.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: And but individually, uh it's tough.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: You always have uh, you know, basically a go bag or whatever, and you're always looking at places where you're gonna send your family, and you try to find the routes that they're gonna be able to go to where they're not stuck in traffic like how it was with Rita, where a bunch of people died on the on the you know highways and stuff.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that's that's my part of it.
18:52
SPEAKER_02: Robbie.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
18:54
SPEAKER_02: The whole thing about that is they, you know, they send you home, they tell you to get your family evacuated, find a place for them to go and get them on the road, then gather up the things you're gonna need for at least a week or two.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you can only pack so much clothes in a bag and things like that, but you really realize uh how much resources are out there that people, the community will provide for you when you when you're faced with something like this.
19:15
SPEAKER_02: Uh Leighton was right, Katrina sent a lot of people from New Orleans over to West Orange, which is where I work at the time.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: And we were housing these refugees in a closed-down school until uh the next storm was coming in towards us, and we had to evacuate those folks on school buses, like eight school buses to Marshall, which is where you're at, Tyler.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: Uh and we dropped them off to the community center, made the trip back, and then we we got prepared to to uh kind of evacuate ourselves.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: Uh we went to a school up in Mauriceville, which is not far away, which wasn't far enough.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: Everything was fine and dandy until two o'clock in the morning.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: The air conditioners blew off top of the roof and it started raining on us.
19:52
SPEAKER_02: So we got up and went back into the city, had to cut our way back into the city, uh, start clearing roads and things like that.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: But uh we realized we were in the eye of the hurricane, and we're on tobacco driving down the road, you see pieces of tin flying across the field like it's a helicopter blade.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: Then you realize, hey, we need to get somewhere.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's just a that was those those both sharms were catastrophic events, tremendous catastrophic events.
20:18
SPEAKER_02: One was wind related, then the other was uh was extremely water related, a lot of flooding, a lot of flooding.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Ike Ike was the water.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that was tremendous.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: But uh the the chief will always find a place, or the admin will always try to find a place to house his officers temporarily until the thing gets passed, and then uh you know, to at a certain extent you go back and when you get some downtime, check on your own place, right?
20:41
SPEAKER_02: To make sure that you still have a roof and everything's fine and yeah, and had had uh damage there.
20:46
SPEAKER_02: And if you were good to go back home, you could, but your family's still evacuated out somewhere because they they're not allowed back in.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: Right.
20:53
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's just that the dynamics of that.
20:55
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh I hell, I remember spending the night one night because there's no air conditioner.
20:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh air conditioners are power for the most part.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: Walmart and West Orange had uh generators pulling on flatbed trailers and they had their meat cooler fired up.
21:08
SPEAKER_02: We spent the night in the meat cooler until we couldn't stand anymore and we woke up and got out of there.
21:13
SPEAKER_02: But that's just, you know, one that's not a good idea, by the way, to try to spend the night in a meat cooler.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: That's just a bad idea.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: But at the top it's all great.
21:21
SPEAKER_02: Well, and act like that, you just kind of adjust and kind of go with it.
21:24
SPEAKER_02: Now that you've we've been through several hurricanes, me and Layton, we kind of know what to expect.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: We know what's going to happen, we know what we need to bring, the essentials, we know to get our families out first.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh, so it's there's a lot of a lot of planning that goes ahead goes into these things, but it's up to the individual officer to make sure they get their family out safe to a safe place.
21:45
SPEAKER_02: And communication sometimes you won't hear from them because cell towers go down and things such as that.
21:50
SPEAKER_02: And this first net uh it's beneficial, but it's not beneficial if there's no power to the cell towers.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: Uh which they kind of overcame that generators now.
21:58
SPEAKER_02: I got a I got a whole home generator on my house.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Also, if we lose power, I'm good here.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: But uh as long as I don't lose the room for you know take on a lot of water for flooding.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: So that's a whole different situation.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, there's a lot that goes into it.
22:11
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a lot of work to be done outside of just regular police work.
22:15
SPEAKER_02: You might be called to go move trees off the road with a chainsaw.
22:18
SPEAKER_02: We did that for several days in West Orange.
22:20
SPEAKER_02: Uh but you had to open the city back up to get people back in so they could check on the places and make sure there's no power lines down that would electrocute folks.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot that goes into it.
22:29
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of unusual work, not actually in the job description of a cop, but there's work to be done, and and you don't need to be told to go do it.
22:37
SPEAKER_02: You know what needs to happen, so you just go do it and take care of it.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, and Layton brings up a good point about refugees and and what well the unfortunate I cringed every time I heard that, and it's not because I don't mind helping people.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Helping a neighbor, I think, is us being Texas guys, and that's just kind of the motto, the neighborly thing to do in Texas.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: The problem with having refugees is that it happens every single time, and it's an enforcement situation, and I'm just gonna call a spade a spade, is that it's the lower economic class that typically has to be evacuated or relocated to another city.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: And so you're bringing that type of environment in different cultures from different regions that don't know the cops there.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: You've got cops in that area that are also dealing with personal anxiety and personal situations with their own family, and it's almost like the perfect storm, no pun intended, for a disaster to happen, which we all experienced that with Katrina with some of the refugees coming over from Louisiana.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: We wanted to help those individuals, but they didn't want to be there, they didn't want to be inside of a refugee center, and so that's it kind of become problematic.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And it's just one of those things, to your point, Robbie, is that it's not something you signed up for as a cop, but you got to deal with it.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Layton, I cut you off.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I didn't mean to.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: What were you gonna say?
23:44
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, it was I was just gonna say during that reader, uh, people were gone for six weeks.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: So six weeks, you're you're in a town with no electricity.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: There's no electricity for probably a good three weeks.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: And when when you I don't know if you've ever been around a city where everything, every light is off.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: You and and as a cop, you know your city pretty well, but when them lights are off, then you don't know where you're at half the time.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's scary.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that's a good point.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, one thing that typically happens is the criminals really don't leave, they stay to loop and break in houses and liquor stores and things like that.
24:23
SPEAKER_02: So you have to deal with that element too and act as a cop sometimes.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: We've caught people trying to break into a liquor store during a hurricane.
24:29
SPEAKER_02: Like after the hurricane's hitting and they're breaking into a liquor store, there's jails closed.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: What do you do with them, right?
24:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh, which is a different, a whole different story for a different day.
24:39
SPEAKER_02: But we had a plan and we've executed that plan well.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: Not executed the person, we executed the plan.
24:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, again, I appreciate you guys jumping on.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: Um I can't I can't thank y'all enough.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Good luck today.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: I'll travel to Austin for what's going on with MTMPA.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh very, very, very proud of you both.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Listen, for you for you blue blue grip podcast fans, a couple weeks, we've got some some pretty cool podcasts coming up.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: One being Wade Steam.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we all are going to attend the CF, excuse me, CAFR training there at our main office.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh, that'll be next week.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: All the field services are gonna be there.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: I think we have some local POAs that are also going to attend, and that's really dealing with some public records, uh, public information records requests, which in field services we have to navigate around and manage a lot.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: And so it's gonna be some good information being pushed out.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Wade Steen is gonna join us here on the Blue Grip Podcast.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: We also have Jeffrey Badger, a Uvaldi native that kind of has an inside perspective of the Yovali shooting and you know what transcended after that and what kind of happened after that.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna get a special kind of inside look.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: So, some couple cool things coming up within TMPA Blue Grip Podcast, and uh stay tuned for that.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Also, if you're not subscribed to TNPA's Texas Minute, it's kind of a weekly rundown of what's going on across the state.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Really, really, really good information.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh and we get that information from our field services, from our field rips, such as Robbie Campbell and Light Ganary, and those across the state.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: So if you're not if you're not subscribed to that, go ahead and subscribe.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Those are pushed out typically Thursday afternoon into Friday.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: So, again, from all of us at TNPA, hope you guys stay safe.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: We dodged the bullet with this storm and uh very thankful for that.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: God bless you, and as always, we God bless Texas.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: We're out of the