Latest / APD Pod Squad / Episode 6; Helene Recovery, October 21, Chief Mike Lamb

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Episode 6; Helene Recovery, October 21, Chief Mike Lamb · APD Pod Squad

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Rick Rice, and this is the APD Pod Squad.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Helene relief recovery information and conversation.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me in a moment is actual chief of police Mike Lamb, who's been a busy guy, so we're looking forward to hearing his perspective of the storm and its aftermath.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Today is Monday, October 21st, day 24 of the emergency response and recovery effort.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hard to believe it's been more than three weeks since Helene arrived in Western North Carolina.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we emphasize the date.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: We point that out because the information is constantly changing, and mostly in a good way.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: So once again, today's date is Monday, October 21st, which might not be the same as when you are listening.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: So just please bear that in mind.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, for the most urgent, up-to-date, complete information from the city of Asheville, one-stop shopping.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you have internet access, and thankfully most folks are getting that back, go to Ashevillenc.gov slash Helene.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's AshevilleNC.gov backslash Helene.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: That site's being updated around the clock, so make sure you like and follow the Facebook page for the Asheville Police, Asheville City Government, and Bunkham County government as well to stay up to date.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: As always, we will start with the good news.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: City of Asheville curfew hours have been lifted.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: One more great sign of life returning to normal here in the mountains.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Normal, unfortunately, does sometimes mean criminal activity.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we continue to encourage our community that if you see something, say something, please call 911 to report any illegal activity.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Regular trash pickup has resumed in the city of Asheville.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: That happened starting last week, which means the blue recycling bins are being used for recycling, and of course the green for garbage.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Storm debris collection is beginning and being done by a contractor.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully you will start to see those trucks in your neighborhood soon.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: They will be doing more than one run.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if they come, they pick up some, and you don't see them again right away.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Don't fear, they're coming back.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Check out our Facebook page in that debris collection and some guidance how to separate household debris from yard debris.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: City of Asheville Sanitation customers, if you haven't already, download the AVL Collects app to receive alerts and notifications and don't delete it after this is all said and done.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to have on the regular getting reminders of trash day and such.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: The big thing a lot of people want to know about still talking about is the water situation, especially if you live in the city of Asheville and are served by the North Fork Reservoir or some surrounding communities or that also use Asheville water.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like me, I live in Asheville City Limits.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Major progress there as water continues to arrive at homes and businesses.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, last Tuesday morning, we saw it return to this building, police headquarters in downtown Asheville, which is next to Pack Square Park as a point of reference.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Personally, I live in City Limits as well, as I'd mentioned, but right on the Anka Candler line.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we got it around midnight on Tuesday, and I've been flushing like a fool ever since.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is some confusion about the water itself.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: What is it like?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: How can we use it?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: The water is not safe for drinking from the tap directly, or brushing teeth and the like.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Water must be vigorously boiled for at least one minute before consumption.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And once again, that's on a personal choice basis.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: The water is safe for laundry, showering.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Don't swallow water while showering, just keep your mouth closed during that process.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hand washing clothing, washing dishes, flushing toilets, things like that.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: But that once again is a personal choice of what you are comfortable with.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Personally, in my home, my wife and I are both showering with it, doing some laundry, mostly things that aren't delicate, like jeans, socks, etc.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't seen any staining or anything at my house, but perhaps different at yours, different sediment being picked up in different locations.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that's once again entirely up to you.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: The power situation also continues to improve.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Great strides there, but there are still some folks without it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, the number keeps shrinking as they continue to make more repairs.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And according to Duke Energy, about three-quarters of the outages did fall outside the Asheville city limits, predominantly located on the eastern side of Buncombe County.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So this bears repeating.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: If your power is still out, but your outage is not represented on the Duke Power Outage map, make sure you text OUT out to 57801.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's out to 57801.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Or you can do that with the Duke Energy app.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So this isn't that uncommon during major storms.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's all part of the way the electric grid and the system with outage restoration works.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes it might not look like you're being represented, just to be sure, make sure you tell them again.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Stay on them about that.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: As always, the latest updates are being posted on the Asheville City Government and Buncombe County Government Facebook pages and at AshevilleNC.gov backslash Helene.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me now, Asheville Chief of Police, Mike Lamb.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: You've been a busy guy, like a lot of others, and in a way that you could have never predicted or expected, as this has been hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime event.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this has been uh something that, I mean, just the catastrophe level has been humbling and overwhelming at the same time.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we had something similar to this in 2004, whenever the three hurricanes came together and made a storm, and it was it was basically what they called a hundred-year flood, but I think they're actually calling this one a anywhere from a 500-year flood to a thousand-year flood, which has you know, it's just it's been many, many days straight and long days of of having to do coordination and making sure our recovery efforts are best for our city.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's been three weeks since Helene and uh we call it tropical storm Helena.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: I heard some people just pushing back on that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it was a hurricane when it arrived, it was a tropical storm.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there were hurricane force winds uh accompanied even here in western North Carolina, they were clocked upwards of 100 miles an hour.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: But as you just like 2004, there was something that happened before that.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: So the rain started on a Wednesday and some areas got between eight to ten to even twelve inches of rain leading up to Helene landing on Friday, three weeks ago.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: So at what point did you know that this was going to be not just bad, but historic?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty early on on Friday morning.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So Thursday night into fr into Friday morning is is when we when I knew it was going to be a historic flood.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: It it's hard to predict weather in the mountains.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I remember growing up uh hearing Bob Cald Caldwell on WLOS say, you know, you never can predict what weather's gonna be in the mountains because when fronts hit the mountain ranges, sometimes they break up, sometimes they go around, sometimes they go straight over.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's hard to predict what is actually gonna happen with a storm.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times here in the Asheville region, you you have to wait until the storm gets here to see what it's actually going to do.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so early Friday morning is when the alerts started going off that that this is going to be uh probably somewhere around the 500-year floodplain.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so thankfully, Asheville Water Department already, engineers had already drawn up maps to see what the 100-year floodplain, 500, 100-year floodplain, what that looked like.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we quickly got together and hatched up a plan in less than an hour to start doing evacuations because prior to this, there was a voluntary evacuation that was on Thursday.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Early Friday morning, it became a mandatory evacuation.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um APD officers along with Asheville Fire Department and other volunteer fire departments put it together a plan and started doing evacuations all along the Swannoa Valley and anywhere in the edge of the Swantanoa River because they identified 2,800 structures that were in the floodplain.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um so uh what we did was we took an LRAD.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh LRAD is an acronym for long-range acoustic device, basically a very, very loud speaker, and strapped it to a patrol car with a pre-recorded message telling people it was a mandatory evacuation.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Flood waters were rising to leave your house.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um we went with through different neighborhoods, different areas along the river, sounding that alarm, but um also officers and detectives um went door to door to different houses, um, went to different hotels, different apartments, different condos, and told people you've you've got to evacuate.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, at this point, I think we're we're at up to countywide 42 lives that were lost.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing for people to think about is that could have been in the thousands.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our first responders that morning evacuated thousands of people um out of that floodplain.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it was their heroic actions um really saved many, many lives.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: The storms, plural, affected just about everybody in every corner of western North Carolina, but they seem to impact the city of Asheville more than anywhere else.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it because, well, part of of course the population center being what it is, but the other because of where the rivers are located and how developed it's become around those rivers.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: The river arts district just devastated after so much work has been put into that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the whole Swannanoa Valley built more village, uh, as everyone mentioned.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And as the Swannanoa River uh exits Asheville into Swantanoa itself, of course, that city also devastated.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody knows about uh Bat Cave and also Lake Lure and that area in Chimney Rock, it's just absolutely devastated.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if this had occurred a year ago, your role would have been different than just this year and how quickly things have changed.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So now as the chief of police as opposed to a deputy chief, you knew that you had to make some major decisions and you had to make them fast.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was important that we as the Asheville Police Department didn't work in asylum.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that we had to uh with the activation of the EOC, we had to work hand in hand with um other law enforcement agencies, other first responders, um, in order to get the resources here that we needed because we we realized early on that this was going to be a prolonged event.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um so thankfully Asheville Fire Chief Mike Case made the call early on to start getting resources in at that time.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a call was made to a uh New York professional incident management team.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so that their presence and their um their training really helped us to get organized very early on.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We made some pretty key requests to the state of North Carolina to get an additional 100 law enforcement officers in here because we realized that, you know, in addition to the evacuations, we we had other pods or points of distribution that would have to be protected.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: We also had so many streets that were devastated and dwellings and and places that were devastated by the floods that um we knew there was going to be a lot of dangerous areas, a lot of abandoned areas that would need to be protected.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the first day or two afterwards we had a lot of looting that happened along the river because there were places that first responders, law enforcement couldn't give vehicles to.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we were thankful that we got the assistance of departments like Greensboro Police Department.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Greensboro has their own ATV team.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they were able to take those ATVs and respond to these areas that just were caked in mud and uh police vehicles, traditional police vehicles couldn't get into.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Fayetteville also brought some of those units.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I believe Kerry also brought some of those units, the utility vehicles and things like that.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the law enforcement community responded, let's talk about that a little bit since we've kind of entered that territory.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually right now going through all those lists as we thank people on our social media site, and there's so many to thank.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: The outpouring was quick and it was just overwhelming, sounds like a bad word, but there were so many officers from other communities that were here to help.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was heartwarming and overwhelming at the same time.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: The coordination that had to take place.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was um thankfully with the State Emergency Management Office, they were able to help us to start coordinating uh getting these departments in.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what we didn't realize early on was that we were gonna have to have a mechanism in place to track who's coming in, what shift they're working, how many vehicles they're bringing in, uh, where where are we gonna house these people?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we told them to be self-sufficient, like bring sleeping bags and stuff like that, but we still had to provide a place for them to stay and food for them, uh facilities for them, um, radios for them, since you know th early on nobody had cell phone coverage.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our only means of communication was via via handheld radio or car radio.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so thankfully we we have very hardworking, very innovative staff, technology-minded staff that were able to put together a system and put together a spreadsheet to start help tracking these departments, you know, for a variety of reasons, you know, so that we we can keep track of them, so that we know that they're they're not stuck on a post for hours on end, um, so that we get FEMA reimbursement, and so that now, you know, we can go back and thank these agencies for helping us.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, speaking of of communications, you know, what was so difficult that the first morning of of Tropical Storm, Helene, was the fact that we couldn't get a hold of our officers that were off off duty to make sure they were okay.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, and thank God in the end, um, you know, a couple days later we were able to make sure that they our officers were 100% accounted for.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I mean, even that morning, you know, we had officers that worked 16 hours straight that couldn't call home to check on their own home or their spouses.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, th those officers were were here working, protecting the community, working extremely hard, but in the back of their mind, they're thinking, you know, is is my home, is my family okay, and not knowing for sure if they were.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I know there's officers that that had trees land on their home and they're still showing up for work.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, so doing their job while things are happening behind the scenes and uh in some cases with very strong spouses that are there to to support them, uh which was amazing.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the building itself, here where we are located here, municipal building in downtown Asheville, the building itself transformed as part of our support to other law enforcement agencies and our own officers.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh rooms that were dedicated for, say, uh training in normal and just meeting with the patrol before their their shifts turned into like a cafeteria.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there were storage rooms that were meant for our bicycle team that now became a mini grocery store.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the back parking lot became a a place for delivery of food and supplies and and of course porta potties.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Which we're grateful to no longer have to use with the cold weather having around.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank God.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the coordination that went into that, it may have seemed chaotic, but I would use it, I would use the term organized chaos.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was fantastic.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it definitely was.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for us, you know, as an agency, we have uh so many people with so many different talents, and our logistics team is very good.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and they're they were taking an influx of donations, making sure that uh, you know, Portageons were here, that Portageons were clean, making sure that officers had water, they had food.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, officers are working 16 hours straight a day, and um, you know, doing that for days on end, you don't like you don't have time to go to the grocery store if a grocery store is open because it didn't get power until later on.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we were able to take these donations and at least make sure that officers had food, water, toiletries, paper goods to take home for themselves, for their families.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was one less thing they had to worry about in the midst of all this stress and chaos.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't want to leave anybody out, but I know that Captain Hawkins and Captain McClanahan, I know that they did the Lord's work during that.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they would even come up to me, and I'm I'm you know, not an officer, not as important as what you guys are doing out in the field, but they were even checking on me before they were worried about themselves.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I told everyone that asked me, you know, because people that I know that knew I lived in Asheville, had seen the pictures, had heard the stories, and I'm like, what you've seen and heard isn't the tip of the iceberg.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I go, but I'm grateful to work at the Asheville Police Department.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: I go, who are really taking care of us.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it truly is a family.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there's, you know, I didn't not only have I heard it from our own officers, but um, you know, we've had so many different outside law enforcement agencies that have said, I'm impressed with your staff.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're they are very compassionate, very empathetic.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: They checked on me, they made sure I had what I needed.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we've got the the FEMA laundry service that's down in the middle lot.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I got an email from that guy.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Mr.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Black.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Mr.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Black emailed me and he said um he he's never been treated so well anywhere that uh that he has here in Asheville because our officers had been taking him food to make sure he's not sitting down there and and not getting fed.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he said just he said an immense thank you for the way he's been treated while he's been offering laundry services for us and and is just just very thankful for the officers that have that have reached out to him.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've gotten to know him quite well as uh no water at my house until just a few days ago.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: We had no water here in the building until just a few days ago, uh like most of Asheville.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, nothing that nobody else was experiencing.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: We were also experiencing that here.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but with the laundry services and, of course, the ability to have our supplies taken care of, it went a long way towards our officers being able to do their job without having to worry about that.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that even goes another level from just caring about your employees to recognizing the value of their job and how to make them most effective.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, that's definitely.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we have a culture of of just empathy here and and checking on each other.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's important uh with wellness for as peers to be able to check on each other because this is with this being a prolonged event, there's going to be stress, there's gonna be f fatigue, um, there's gonna be hypervigilance, you know, there's all these things that go along with having a prolonged, um, stressful event.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so as an agency, you know, we've developed this culture of wellness to where it's we're making sure that each officer is taking care of each other, but also checking on each other and also making sure that with all these other outside outside agencies that are here that they have the resources and everything they need.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, sometimes it's just good to talk, you know, and that's that's why uh the one of the beautiful and wonderful things about this podcast is being able to tell stories.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's so many officers that did so many heroic things on Friday morning the 27th, that it is it is so valuable and therapeutic for them to be able to come on the podcast and tell their stories.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, that's what we're gonna have for the next couple of days or weeks or or hearing stories from these officers about going into the water, almost, you know, getting swept away themselves, saving people's lives, um, directing fast water boats from the fire department to people that were clinging on to power poles, you know.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I I remember that morning I went out myself and there was a call of uh two girls that were clinging on to a one was clinging on to a log and the other one was clinging on to a bus stop.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um the the waters rose so quickly that the the dad that was with him, he had the dad and these two girls, and they were elementary school age.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the dad got swept away.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and he's still unaccounted for.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: But neighbors nearby, just good people from the community, came down, heard these girls screaming, and and rescued them from the flood waters.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to get there and coordinate, trying to get them back to family and get them where they needed to be because the didn't have their mom with them and then the the flood waters just swept their dad away.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's it's stories like that that you know these officers are going to remember for the rest of their lives, and it's it's important for them to be able to tell that story.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: But with so many stories of tragedy, many of those are accompanied by stories of hope.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh acts of generosity and kindness uh like we're experiencing right now with our detective Sam de Gray putting together a photo project, trying to reunite photos, precious family heirlooms with family members.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the only reason we probably have those photos is because wherever those photos were does not exist anymore.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or some part of wherever those photos are don't exist anymore.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to get those back into the hands of people, making reunions of just memories and things of that nature.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, Chief of Police, Mike Lamb, let me ask you before we wrap this one up today, and we're gonna talk a lot more about this, of course, in the days to come, in the years to come.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: This will be the one that we all talk about.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is gonna supplant Blizzard of 93.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna hear much about that anymore.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you, where are we now as a department, you as the chief, and how do we move forward from here?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of position are we in as a police department serving the community, the state of our officers, their physical, their mental health?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um I think we're getting back to normal.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where there's there's a sense of normalcy that's coming back with power being restored to a lot of places.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were very thankful that we didn't lose power during the storm because um, especially, you know, the fact that we didn't lose internet, we got emails because so many people's cell phone service went down.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: There were so many emails that poured in with family members concerned about their loved ones that that's what we started building our missing persons list off of were those emails that came in wanting people to check on their loved ones to make sure that they were okay.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so thank God we didn't lose that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: But um the fact that we've got water now, I mean, just uh to be able to go to a bathroom and not a portageon.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's uh it it's it's little things that you don't appreciate on a daily basis that you truly when it when it's gone, there's this true sense of appreciation in being able to appreciate the the culture that we live in, the community that we live in, the the the blessings that we have.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I d I think we're we're we're getting back to that.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we I am starting to see a lot of fatigue, you know, because it's officers are having to to deal with things they typically haven't had to deal with, or having to uh, you know, they did a especially a lot of rescue work and search and rescue work for the first couple of days and now it's a prolonged recovery work.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, we're we're monitoring that and making sure that if officers need a day off, that they get a day off, you know, that they're able to be with their family.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I but I I think getting back to that sense of normalcy is is is really helping us and and as an agency we're you know, we're strong.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're resilient.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, we've we've had a lot of training and how to stay resilient.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're and we're we're just so extremely thankful from the support from the community.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've started to see people in the gym again, which is part of people's physical and mental health.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was empty for a week and a half or so, maybe almost two weeks.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, well, with no showers, that kind of plays a part probably.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to build up a good sweat and then have no way to get it off you.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I've seen you down there, I've seen a lot of the fellow officers down there, and that's kind of refreshing, too, and that's good for them uh on many levels.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: It it helps manage stress.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the first week I didn't work out, and I could feel that stress building up within me.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, working out helps get that cortisol out of your body and it helps to j just working out makes you more physically and mentally healthy.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I started working out even before the showers came back and um I thought I smelled something there.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh Well, that it was it but I did I I made sure I I stayed clean, but it was difficult because you we had these cold jugs of water that I had to use to clean off with.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the ice bucket challenge from back in the day.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was, yeah.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost that cold some mornings too.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, the timing of us getting some plumbing back is perfect.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because these last couple of mornings have been pretty chilly.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: So just every bit of normalcy like that, being able to get back to the gym, being able to take a shower, being able to flush a toilet, and and pretty soon all of those.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're never gonna forget this, and we probably shouldn't.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's always lessons to be learned, and we're gonna be talking more about it too.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: But uh thank you to the fine job you and your officers did during this.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh literally saving lives uh in our community.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Stories that we're going to be telling soon uh right here in the podcast.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Chief Lamb, thank you.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Rick.