Latest / APD Pod Squad / Episode 16; 6 Months Later - Looking Back at Hurricane Helene

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Episode 16; 6 Months Later - Looking Back at Hurricane Helene · APD Pod Squad

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is the APD Pod Squad.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to this special edition.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: As on this six-month anniversary of Hurricane Helene, we have gathered three of the key players for a look back, a reaction to everything that happened in the hours, days, weeks, months that followed that tragic storm.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Asheville Police Chief Mike Lamb, Jeremy Knighton, Assistant Chief of the Asheville Fire Department, and Mark Starling with News Radio 570 WWNC.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Those of us that lived through Hurricane Helene and survived have some very vivid memories.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: We'll hear theirs.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Each has a unique perspective, and we'll talk about what they saw, what they experienced, how they reacted, and where we go from here.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Six months later, looking back at Hurricane Helene.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Rick Rice, and this is the APD Pod Squad.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jeremy Knighton, Assistant Fire Chief at the Asheville Fire Department, is with us.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Asheville Chief of Police Mike Lamb and Mark Starling from News Radio 570 WWNC, our local iHeartRadio News Talk Station.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: A special round table discussion as we look back at Hurricane Helene six months later.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like forever ago, yet it feels like yesterday.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know to all of us that saw things, that heard things, we all did things during it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go around the room and just start with this.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll start with you, Jeremy.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: What did you see, the first thing that you saw where you knew this was really, really bad and we were in for it?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think for me, I'm kind of a paid pessimist anyway.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm looking for worst case scenario.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's the planning assumption that we have to to go by.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: And when I saw the words really before the storm, catastrophic and explosive, talking about this hurricane season, and those words consistently being used, and up until the point of them talking about the pre-arrival of the the rainfall before the storm even gets here.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think those pieces and those documents and those emails and that situational awareness that really triggered me, honestly.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because number one, I lived, I think we both we all probably lived through 04.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: A lot different positions.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: I was in a boat, I was, you know, out doing stuff, but I remember the the two storms from the Gulf, the only Rolodex card I had was O4.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the one I immediately yanked out.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think having that um information, different perspective immediately put me into kind of a hyper drive, or we've really got to like this is serious.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually worked for the iHeart Radio Stations during that, Ivan and Francis.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Mark, you weren't here yet.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't here yet.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: I got here in 2015, but I mean it you know, hearing the tales of it and then being in media during that time, we covered that story, even though being in Florida, like we covered that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's a banner uh somewhere in this building.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're broadcasting today, we're recording this at the iHeartRadio Studios in Asheville.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's a banner somewhere in this building that survived those storms of 04.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's battered and beaten.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we were actually out there on location at something when it all happened, and that it's kind of uh kind of the memory of the storm.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's somewhere in this building.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know it is.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I it it very well may be in your old office sometime.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Jeremy, so for people that know what you were doing during the storm, you were at the emergency operations center.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: My role as the chief of emergency management for the city is uh the emergency uh the emergency operations center, our our emergency preparedness, our planning efforts, all that kind of falls under my shop.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I support the programs that are anything really that doesn't deal with us going on a normal call.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: And by normal I mean house fire or EMS calls.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: So all the Swift Water uh operations, I support that program.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the hazardous materials, I support that program.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then emergency management, obviously, is my my primary.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: So this entire incident fell right into all of the programs that I support.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty fortuitous that Station 13, which is the building on Broadway, is exists at this point, that it was built only about what a year or two prior to that.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: We did our 12-month uh warranty visit in October.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's very providential.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we we were in a full EOC activation and they were walking through doing the the punch list.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's how new it was.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we we really hadn't even broken the elevator yet.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: You hadn't even rubbed the knobbies off the tire yet.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean No.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and again, you know, that's the the commitment.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like we talk about resilience, we talk about all that.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: The commitment of our community to step up.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is a big deal.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Our elected officials, our leadership, Ms.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Campbell, and then you know, the city manager's office, fire chief at the time, Scott Burnett, all of the people that came together and said this is this is a priority.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's a big deal.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that really, you know, uh our preparedness and our resilience was put to the test.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And had those things not fallen into place, um relationships, you know, Chief Lamb and I, we we grew up minutes apart.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're both from here.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is our community, it always has been.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: So the good old valley, that's right.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's those are all things, um, you know, that preparedness, that commitment initially when when Helene wasn't a thing um really, really escalated and and helped us.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Chief Lamb, how about you?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: What did you see?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: When did you know?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm I'm definitely more of a like I've gotta see it to really grasp it type person.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there was some great emergency management planning up to that morning, and you know, thankfully we had a lot of APD staff and then you and and AFD staff that were there in station thirteen, and I was at headquarters whenever the storm hit that morning.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there were two things that happened that was kind of an oh crap moment, and one was that water started pouring in from the ceiling of the police department.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we had rally as many detectives and officers that we had in the building that weren't out in the field.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it was mostly detectives since all the officers were out, and we had to grab buckets and trash cans and whatever we could find and start mitigating the water that was pouring in through the ceiling in the building.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then trees started coming down in the parking lot outside of headquarters, so we had large tree that's right outside the building in our side lot that just kind of broke in two, and uh just the the wind was was horrific at that point.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then I I got out of the office once we mitigated all the flooding internally in the building, and uh I remember making it to Woodfin Place in Charlotte Street at the on-ramp to 240, because uh I was going out to where there was a report of uh a man getting washed away and two girls that were uh rescued from the flood waters of the of the Swannonova by some neighbors.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I I had to stop because uh one of the traffic lights had come down and was swinging like a pendulum uh across that intersection there at Charlotte Street.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So uh now retired uh Lieutenant Tammy Flanning and Bryson was with me and we both stopped and had to basically lash that streetlight to a telephone pole so that it would quit swinging all throughout the intersection.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then the the next place I made it to was 240 right over the Swannon River at at the U-Hall at there that South Tunnel.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've d in 2004 I was in Biltmore Village making sure that looters didn't hit Biltmore Village because of the floodwaters there.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was, like you said, Jeremy, that was my last like that's that's the paradigm that I had established for uh what we do during a flood.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when I looked to my left and saw that the U-Haul building was almost completely underwater, I thought this is just this is nowhere near anything that this is this community has ever experienced.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um never seen water do that much damage and be that forceful.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So those were those were the moments visually that I saw that I realized like this is truly a catastrophic storm.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: So Mark, uh you saw these four walls for a few days because you guys were broadcasting round the clock.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: But and so probably what you were getting was more calls from your listeners telling you how bad it was in different locations, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: So that that was a lot of it.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think for me, the moment that I knew we were dealing with something that was next level, our meteorologist Ray Stage with the Weather Channel, we've been working together for 10 years, and he has always been a very measured individual.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: He is never, no matter how bad the the storm system that was coming in, he was always measured in this is what you should expect, not using bombastic language or anything like that.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: And he sent me a text message Thursday morning, and he said, I don't know how to describe this any other way than catastrophic, and that's the way I plan to talk about it on the air.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: Please just understand that now.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that for me was kind of a hmm, okay.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we went through Thursday and we got into Thursday night, and we knew that you know Brevard Road was already shut Thursday evening by like I think 7.30, they had shut down Brevard Road down by uh Bent Creek.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so we knew that we were dealing with we were gonna be dealing with certainly at least the very lowest levels of catastrophic flooding.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: When I think visually outside of that, I can remember standing out in the lobby um on Friday morning, and no trees had blown down at that point.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: And uh Ariel uh Reimer from our other one of our sister stations, Star 104.3, was standing next to me, and I turned around and walked away and walked through the kind of the interior door, and I heard hear Ariel go, there goes all the trees, and I thought, what is she talking about?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I walked back out there and looked, and the tree came down across the fence, closing, blocking off the gate, and then it was pretty much dominoes all the way down the road.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we're there was probably our best guessed is somewhere between one uh a hundred and a hundred and fifty trees that all got hit with what looked like a downburst because they all blew the same direction, they all blew over from one side of the road to the other, and that pretty much secured us.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: We weren't leaving the radio station.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, Ariel's husband showed up about 12:30 on Friday and got Ariel and and got her out of here.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: And Tank and I stayed, and we just kind of realized, like, okay, well, now we're gonna start to figure out what's exactly going on.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't long after that that the call from the Dry family, um, from Michael Dry, um, they were had not been on the roof yet, they were in the second story of their house.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: That was that was tough.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: That one was a tough one.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: But I would say that the I would say seeing those trees come down, even covering 25 or 30 storms in Florida throughout my career in radio, like it just felt different.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: And something was off.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: And we didn't really know what was about to happen because ever I think everybody thinks flooding and everything just fills up all at once.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: But the problem is it's got to make it from where it's like right from like the starting point.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's got to come downhill.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: And that process just took a lot longer than I think anybody really expected it to take.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, but those trees coming down, that was my first visual cue that like, okay, we're in trouble here.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Chief Lamin actually commented on that as we're driving up here today on Summerlin Road.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for people that don't know where the radio station is located, it's off of Leicester Highway.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's Summerlin Road, is this short private road.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right off to the side, it you're right, hundreds of trees.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like it that's as bad as it is anywhere, right here, about a hundred yards from where we're sitting.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: We tried to climb uh Tank and I tried to climb out on Saturday, and it took us it took us the better part of 45 minutes to probably make it 150 feet, 200 feet down the road from where the fence is to where that first house is.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: And interestingly enough, that first house, there's a there's a brighthouse pole out there, and that hot spot was working intermittently.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: And one of our old co-workers, John Roten and his wife Betty, showed up and Betty's phone started going off, and I said, You got a phone?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: And it works?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: And she's like, It's that hot spot.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the first time I was able to make contact with my brother.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: I had not heard from my wife since Thursday, sometime, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: And would not hear from her until late Sunday afternoon.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: So am I the only one that kind of lost track of days of the week in that first week?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: It all ran together.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know if it was a Sunday or a Monday or a Tuesday.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Jeremy, you spent most of the time, at least in the first week, at the emergency operations center, right?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I I was there for about 45 hours straight.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: And through that 45 hours, it's it's it it's all one blur.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And even I've gone back and looked at like my documents because I kept good notes because I, you know, that's just what we do, and some of the things that are there still to this day, I I don't I I don't have a picture in my mind of how that happened.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I wrote it down.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: It was similar to that.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: I I was here 14 and a half days straight total.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: But through that initial, it was the initial first I think eight days before I actually decided to take a trip out of the building, and part of it was I didn't want to leave the building.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: I was a little bit frightened to leave the building, to be honest.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't want to go home because I didn't know what I was gonna find.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I felt like if I just didn't go, that was a way to totally avoid it in a sense.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: Those first five days, every I I I would just look outside and go, okay, the sun is up.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how many times it's come up since the storm or how many times it's gone down since the storm.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: I just knew that it came up again, and I'm like, okay, we're still on the air.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: That was kind of the only thing for us here was there was nothing else to do but be on the air.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like even if we wanted to do anything else, we couldn't do it.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: So we, you know, we just kind of did what we were we signed on to do, which was just get on the air.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't have any information, but just kind of did what we did.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about that, uh, about what we did and what each of us did and our responsibilities.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Chief, why don't you start with this one?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So where did you see yourself making the biggest impact?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I know you just jumped right into it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the police department kind of everyone had unique responsibilities, assigned different things uh based on the ICS protocols and all of that.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what was exactly what you did, how were you most effective?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: What did you see coming out of it enduring it as far as that's concerned?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: After that initial morning, like I I'm I'm the kind of leader where I I I like being out in the field.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I like seeing what's going on, and I think it informs and helps me to make better decisions based on uh seeing the catastrophe, seeing how things are unfolding and getting a lay of the land.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So by lunchtime I was in the EOC at station thirteen, and that's pretty much where I stayed for uh that afternoon into the evening, and then for the for the days following.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, going back to your your time question, I remember uh one more one of the first mornings Jeremy came in and put a post-it note on the wall and said, Hey, just so y'all know, it is day two.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is Saturday morning, it is now eight a.m.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: and you are going to lose track of time.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the way that we're gonna keep track of days of the week, what day it is, and then and then get our briefings down.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So just I mean, I can't storm fatigue.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's exactly what it is.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: Storm fatigue.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Every hurricane I've ever covered that was intense that we were in the middle of, there is that storm fatigue through the storm in those couple of days afterwards where you're just like, I just I want to say it's Tuesday, but it might not be.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: There's like six other possibilities, right?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: It it's a it's like a brain fog almost.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I can't say enough to just talk about the appreciation.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: One for you, Mark, because I had, you know, that morning I started calling with updates saying, hey, this road's closed now, this is blocked off.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then second, for your leadership, Jeremy, because I mean I don't think we would have been as successful as we were had it not for us.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it like it's it is providential that not only Station 13 and the EOC was created, but also that we did an EOP that emerged when I say EOP, I mean emergency operations plan.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also did a continuity of operations plan because as the ceiling tiles were falling falling into the building, I thought, well, at least we have a backup plan now for if we have to vacate this building, where we're gonna go to, and that was all because of the continuity of operations plan.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: But really where I I saw my role was in um taking the things that we needed to do as a law enforcement agency.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: For example, that's you know, not only the emergency operations, um, but we also had to maintain our regular operations.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that that uh Sunday, that weekend right after the storm, uh we had two homicides, one attempted homicide, and then somebody tried to burn down an apartment building.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I quickly realized that we needed to get help.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so thankfully, through our uh logistics function within the EOC, we were able to order up a hundred officers basically every seven days from the state emergency operations center.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the next thing we had to do was inform the community, and then that was nearly impossible for us to do since we had no cell phone coverage really.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: We had very limited internet coverage.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we had cell service out of station 13, but there were very other few places.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, whenever we had information that we had to get out, for example, the curfews that we had to set up to discourage looting, you know, we would have to call Mark to get that on the radio because so many folks that I talked to afterwards were like, oh yeah, I would get up in the morning, go out, turn on the car, and then I would listen to listen to Mark and Eddie.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: We we had so many people tell us, and and even since then, they said we didn't spend 10 minutes in our house during the storm.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: We just sat in our cars because we didn't have an AM radio, we didn't have an FM radio, we didn't have internet, we didn't have anything else, so we just we had to use our cars.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, that would that was kind of interesting in the sense of like we're in such a full information flow society, right?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we literally carry around constant information flow in our pockets with our cell phones, and then all of a sudden to have that yanked out from underneath your feet, and and you couldn't do anything.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you could watch the little bar try to send that text message, but it just would disappear into the ether, and it you know, and and so uh even for us when we lost internet, like our phone system here is a voice IP system.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: So if you don't have internet, you don't have phones.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: So we didn't have that either.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: And um we've been we've been keeping this.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's actually a buddy of mine, and and he hiked it in on uh Saturday afternoon, and it's a handheld ham radio, and this was the only contact with the outside world that we had.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I got in contact, my buddy had hiked it in here.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: He lives over in West Asheville, he drove over as close as he could get, and then he hiked through all those down trees with this ham radio, and he came walking across the back parking lot, and I just happened to turn and look and I saw him come walking across, and I was like, This is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: I had no idea he had the ham radios, but he came in the back door and and he he said, I've already contacted the ham radio operators network.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: All you have to do is key this thing up and and ask them for what you want, and they'll give it to you.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: They're monitoring literally every rescue operation that is happening in Western North Carolina.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I needed Haywood County information, there was a guy in Haywood.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: When I needed Buncombe, there was five guys here in Buncombe, and they were feeding me like real-time information of hey, we're hearing Asheville Fire Department is just putting boats in the water here to do active rescues, and you know, it was a lifeline of antiquated technology that truly kept everybody informed.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the ham radio thing was I have I'm not certified to use it, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you got to have a license to use it.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have to have a license to be on regular AMFM radio, they'll let anybody do that.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh as is evidenced here by me.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean Tom Dick and Harry can pull this off.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, anybody can pull that off.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you actually have to know what the heck you're doing with the ham radios.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: And and it was it was so interesting that like I think they knew as well how imperative of a role they were going to play with getting us that information.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it was funny when um we had the FCC commissioner uh come for a visit the other day or a few weeks ago, and I I wasn't able to be there, but uh Tank Spencer, my my producer and and cohort in the morning show, uh he called me and he said, Man, there's the coolest freaking thing up on the door of the fire station.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a piece of paper that just says, if you need information, listen to News Radio 570, WWNC, because that's where we're getting our information too.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: And it was kind of like knowing that now, like had we known that then, we probably would have cracked under pressure and we would have been in the fatal position in tears and here on the floor.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: But like kind of knowing that now, I guess reassured us of what the role of radio as a whole is, right?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: And and for us, those first four days, it was just Tank and I, and then once our team.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Team could get access.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the iHeart air staff from Kiss Country and from Star 104.3 and from ESPN, and we had salespeople that were coming in and and management that was coming in.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: It was like we just had to figure out a plan.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: And when the storm left, there was no more information.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so the only information we could get was that short span of time that we had the phones up and running.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: And even when we got the Starlink put into place, like it didn't matter because still nobody else had connection.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it was like, hey, we've got internet, or you'll give us a call.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then it was like, oh, wait a second.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: You can't give us a call.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: So we got to a point where there was actually people that were like coming to the radio station and they would pull up and they'd be like, Hey, we just, you know, we saw this and and we just want to let you know.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: And we're like, well, I guess this is where we're at now.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like this is where we have to go back to the old way.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: And when the phones came back up and people just like we saw the lines pop up and we knew, like, okay, we can get phone calls now.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: And then we were hearing about people that were starting to get self-service in other areas.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: It was really more people from outside of Western North Carolina that were calling in.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: And they were like, we know you don't know what's going on, like eight blocks from you, but just so you know, Marshall is gone.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: And we're I'm like, wait, what?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: What are you talking about?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: Marshall is gone.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: And and it was it was just such a people were painting such incredible pictures with their words and their emotions.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think for Tank and I it was a very easy lift because it was like all you had to do was ask them, hey, what's going on?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: What's going on with you?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Are you are you okay?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: Where are you?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: How can we help you?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: And it really, it was just like we're not doing anything to help.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's the people who are listening that are going, hey, wait, that guy's like two streets over from us, and his elderly mother needs a tank of oxygen, and I've got five extra oxygen tanks here right now.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then we would get a call and they would say, Someone just brought my mom an oxygen tank.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it was that it was that coming together of like, I think that probably the funniest one was this this older woman who called in and said, Every time I've ever been in a hurricane, my best friend and I always keep in touch with each other before, during, and after the storm.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: And they were both in their 80s.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, I can't get a hold of her.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm wondering if somebody might that might be listening lives close enough where they could go check on her.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know, maybe an hour later, we get a phone call, and it's somebody who showed up at this woman's house.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Um, she really wants to know why there's 75 people standing in her front yard.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: And she said she doesn't have enough refreshments for everybody.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: 75 people showed up at this woman's house.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: They just walked.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: And they were like, no, we're just here to check on you.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then like people left her cases of water.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: They like, I mean, it was just every nothing else mattered.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: It was, I know I don't know you, but I will take care of you however I can.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's basically what these phone lines and these and and the seven radio stations, we linked them and all up together and simulcasted them to cover more area.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: And we knew we were getting to six states with the help of KISS Country, and so we knew that like the it wouldn't be long before the cavalry arrived.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: So so Jeremy, I'm sure page one of your emergency operations plan involves communications and does not mention not having any.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: So how frustrating was that and having to pivot and how do we get the word out?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: We've got this resource, we've got these things happening, but we have no way to tell anybody.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's uh it was tough for just a second.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: The good thing about the situation that I'm in is it this truly took a village.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it took a village with all the city staff.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it wasn't about the training and the response.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: Our response to this didn't start on September 27th.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: Our response started to this a long time ago.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then it was relationships between police and fire and public works and water, and then our public information folks, right?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: That is a huge and we and they have fostered that for many, many years.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so we got I remember the very second it came up, it's like we're we're you know, we're dead in the water when it comes to our cell phones.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: We have internet there because again, we had kind of invested in that primary alternate contingent model.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, we're gonna have to go very manual with this.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we started doing the one pagers, and it was the one pager after one pager, and they were updating it daily, and the communications team that we had in our joint information center just went out there and put them on police cars, put them in the hands of firefighters, and people were coming and flocking to these points that they knew they could get information.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: And we knew we had to keep it to one page because no one really is gonna flip it over and look, and so we began to do that, and and that really paid dividends.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: I remember getting on I I did an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, and I remember we were I were watching the me on TV, which is awful enough, but like I I remember looking at the videos and pictures that the world had that we didn't really have at the time, and I'm literally on there, you know, no uniform, I haven't shaved in you know, four or five days.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in a hat, and we're they're asking me what we need, and it was literally food, water, yeah, you know, and that's when I felt like and I was watching the I was almost distracted by the pictures that they were showing, you know, not to mention the whole EOC full of people that were right behind me, yeah, you know, watching me give this interview or whatever.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny, the first time the the first time I saw pictures of what had happened in Swannanoa, I was I was literally doing an interview with CNN International in the newsroom, and the host said, Mark, I don't know if you can see these pictures, and I was just I didn't even know what to say.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: I I I told her, I said, I've I had no idea that this is how bad it was.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is like five miles from my home.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like you start to realize that scope, it's like, oh, wait a second here.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: This is not just the downtown section of Asheville, this is not just downtown Asheville and Weaverville.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like this is 14 counties wide, and it's like everybody is in the same position right now, and nobody had anything.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the other place that where a lot of this was tested, you know, we we had a fairly good plan.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: We had trained on it.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: I remember sitting in the in the EOC and a phone, a picture popped up on my phone, and it was exactly a year to the date we were doing a full-scale exercise in the brand new EOC, and all the same people I'm looking at through my phone are sitting in the room in those same seats.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: So again, that was important, but I think the not having communications made us really decentralize a lot of decision making, and where we got to see a lot of firefighters, police officers, public works, water infrastructure folks out there make decisions at the right level, at the right time, with just good leaders' intent.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that was one of the ground shaking moments for me.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's like we we we have trained our entire careers, and we didn't even know it for potentially this moment.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: And and having those people make those decisions because it was just the right thing to do, and it was one after the other, after the other.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: And watching the police officers come in, firefighters come in, mud up to their necks, grabbing information, grabbing the one-pagers back to the communication, and just over and over and over, I think really you want a picture of resilience, I think that's it.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think people really uh they just kind of what's the marine motto?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Adapt, improvise, overcome.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Is that correct?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to get them out of order.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I saw a lot of that for here.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and everyone having to react to things.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, this isn't gonna work, we don't have this, now what?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: But making things happen.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean everybody saw it, Chief.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: I know you saw it all the time.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and we have I know it's kind of a given for us and what we understand, but we have really talented police officers and firefighters that can really think outside the box and invent new ways to do things in a crisis.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um an example of that was, you know, because we didn't really have cell phone communication, but since we had that, you know, those backups in place prior to we had internet and we had uh emails.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we started getting inundated with emails for welfare checks from people that were in other states and other areas that had that had the had internet and communication.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were inundated with about 400 different emails saying, hey, I can't get a hold of my family member, can you go check on them?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had to take that list.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: The detectives division and the victims advocates all took that in and with the assistance also of the uh the FBI and some of our state and federal partners, and they started breaking down that list, and there was no way that they could check on all 400, but they started triaging and saying, like, who who do we need to check on first?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they prioritized people that were uh had medical emergencies and people that were um elderly.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: And from going through that list and starting with the most vulnerable, they were able to save nine people's lives.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was one guy that fell down in his house that uh broke his leg during the storm, and they were able to go get him the medical assistance that he needed.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then another lady, a lady was running out of oxygen, they were able to get her oxygen.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so they were, you know, it was just thinking outside the box.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, these different supervisors, officers, firefighters were able to take this and just say, okay, you know, we this we just have to figure out how to do this.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the same thing with the resource management.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: When we started having a hundred officers um a week come in, we thought, you know, we've got to track their gas, their hours, um, we've got to have assignments for them.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: How are we gonna keep track of all this?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And thankfully, we had the assistance of a professional incident management team that was on scene with us, and that and that was thanks to uh Jeremy and Chief Case and having that those relationships, not only locally, like we like we have, we all have with each other, we're able to work together, but also professional relationships beyond the city of Asheville and County of Bunkham.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: So there's information and then there's misinformation.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: Is there everyone?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's go around the room.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: What was more difficult?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Getting the correct information out or correcting the wrong information and having to combat that.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Mark, we'll start with you, Mark, because you were you were getting direct feedback from people telling you things, and I'm sure people telling you things that listen, I heard this.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: Thankfully, we had we had one person, we had Tank Spencer that was screening phone calls.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: And you work in news talk radio long enough and you screen enough phone calls, and you start to you start to be able to kind of decipher who is calling with purpose and who is just calling for the sake of calling.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: I think one of the things that helped us out that was so critical for us here at the station is gonna be the PIO teams from the PD and from A uh from Asheville Fire Department, as well as Bunkham County, the Lily and Govis was fantastic, but uh Kelly Klope, Samantha Booth, Rick, you I mean, all of those teams, it was critical for us to be able to get in contact with them really when we needed them, when the need arose.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: And and the fact that we've all worked together for so many years, it was great to be able to just message Kelly and say, Hey, I've got a five-minute block up here.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: I really was looking for information on this.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, you can join us.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: And Kelly would do whatever she needed to do, the phone would ring, and we could get that information on the air.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think the other thing too is that when we would get information and information would go out, and of course, you know, in a situation like this, you get information in, the responsible thing to do is try to vet it as best that you can.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: But if it's a safety thing, you want to try to get it out there as fast as possible.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: It was great that we were able to communicate openly between both of those agencies to say, hey, no, that's not happening, right?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: Or hey, no, no, no, we don't know how that got posted over here, but the it shouldn't have been posted, right?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think we had there was a something with the B tree dam that that happened, and this was several days after the storm.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: And seeing something pop up on Facebook, and I'm like, wait a second, rivers crested.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: We're there's nothing, there can't be something in breed.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: But I at the same time, you're like, wait, I don't, if I don't put this out and that dam does go, now we're in a whole different situation.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: So it was really, it was tough.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: But I think what helped us, I think like what Jeremy said is the relationships that we that we had with the fire department, with the police department, with the county, um, with the city, in a sense, like we just tried to rely on the people we knew that were on the ground because that was the one thing that regretfully we didn't have a team that we could send out of there and send out into it.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: You know, in the good old days, you probably could have.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: But for for us, it was really relying on the PD, relying on officers, relying on firefighters and and everybody else that was kind of pulling together.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I and I think the radio station kind of became the central point and the easiest way for you all to get information out in mass.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: And really, like we didn't have a format, right?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: And and Rick, you spent enough years in radio where you know it takes the moving of like multiple mountain ranges to get a radio station to go commercial free, right?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is that's commercials are how we make our money, right?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's how we pay our bills.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I got a call from uh Rich Bressler, who is the CFO of iHeartRadio on Monday morning after the storm, and he said, Mark, you're the guy on the ground, you're the guy that's you're you're the guy calling the shots, you're the news director.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: What do you need?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, I think we need to be commercial free and simulcasted for 14 at a minimum of 14 days.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: I said, That's the only way that this community gets through this.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: I said, because we've this these stations have become kind of the living room of of this incident.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: And people are coming and they're they're coming to us to tell their stories, but they're also coming to listen, to just take their mind off of what's kind of right immediately in front of them.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: And they never really hesitated.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think the phone went silent for about 10 seconds, and about seven of those seconds, I thought, this is where they fire me.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: I've just asked to take seven radio stations commercial free for seven for 14 days.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: But they said, do it, just do it.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: And and for us, it was um, you know, we had split up into shifts and we were running, you know, everybody was running basically two shifts a day, and I was doing mornings, and then I'd come back and I'd do late nights and then sleep for a couple of hours and then get back up and do mornings again.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: And like, you know, processing that information, it was a 24-hour operation.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we spent most of the time that we should have been sleeping.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: We were sorting through our our system, which if you right behind you, Jeremy, there's a thing that says the Chainsaw Brothers was here.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: So our whole system ran on a very antiquated method known as the 3M post-it note.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: And every phone call that came in got its own post-it note.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: And whatever their need was got put up around these the frames, around the computer edges.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this whole area was covered in post-it notes.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: And as people's needs were met, we would take that post-it note and we would set it to the side in the completed task.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: And that could have been this elderly person needs oxygen, this person needs their a tree removed off of their house.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I think when you talked about kind of using the resources that you have, had it not been for our listeners and one specific one, um, and I'll call him out, uh, Chris Henderson, he called on Tuesday night and he said, Man, he said, I've been listening since you guys went on the air, and he said, since today, since this morning, you've put out 24 names of people that are missing.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, I'm just calling to tell you I found I found 22 of them and they're okay.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: But by the time we got to day 14, Chris had found 480 people and gotten them reconnected with their loved ones.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: It all came in because people were, he was just listening.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: So then we started keeping track of the list, and we would make sure that when they called in, the first thing that they did when they hung up with us was call the 211 missing persons and get them registered there.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: And then we would set our people to work.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that list just grew and grew, and it was like every half hour, 45 minutes, you'd call and be like, Okay, you can take these 15 names off.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: And his little he called it the Minutemen Wellness Checks, and it grew from just him to a group of 25 people that were trained nurses that were now doing medicine runs.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_03: Once they located people and they realized these people are elderly, they're almost out of medication, they we'll be back.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: And they went and they got them their meds.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: It became a full-fledged rescue operation and not really a radio show.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: And none of us had any experience dispatching anything, but somehow or another, I I like to think it was the good Lord Above going, all right, we'll we'll let this we'll let this work, we'll let these gears turn for a little while and see what happens.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it's still it's it's hard for all of us to talk about.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean the whole the whole thing's heavy.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're a cop, you're a firefighter, right?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: But at some point, it had to catch up, right?
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody had that kind of that moment where they just kind of broke a little bit and then regrouped.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: It was a lot.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually a lot.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: It was a lot and live on the air multiple times.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: And still are.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even with the storms that we've had in the last couple of months, it's you know that the PTSD thing is real.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean so was there a moment that you remember?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, very distinctly.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember what day it was, but I do remember it was uh there was a a group of our elected officials had gathered.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_02: And and like you said earlier, people flock to to to really two things communication and organization.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's where people are gonna go.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: And they're gonna figure it out because it's it's built into our DNA.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: I went down there, um, Brad Branham was with me.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: I walk in, it's all the CMO office, it's all of our elected officials in the city, and they're basically looking to me to kind of give a briefing.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sitting there, I'm talking, the sun's out, I'm in a room full of folks that are very it's very humbling and humanizing at that point, right?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: There's no showers to be had.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Nope.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's no, you know, um, there's no shaving, there's no none of those things that we all are used to seeing in each other.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: Very, very, very put together, very, you know, we put our uniforms on to give that out.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I walked into that room and I started talking, and it was like I could feel myself getting choked up and choked up and choked up, and I was like, and then finally I just ended it and walked out, and I just had my moment for a second.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: And there was, I remember I'll never forget, there was a lady from the Red Cross that was there, and Ben Woody, and uh they both just kind of grabbed a hold, we all kind of grabbed a hold of one another at the same time, kind of, you know, and then it was like, okay, I'm good to go.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: But uh after that, hearing, you know, we we did some debriefings and we we we gathered everybody in the EOC and walking around the room to the people that were there, hearing the stories, and that came up from Brad because he remembered it and he was like, I because that was the question that they ask, is where was your moment?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, My moment was Jeremy's moment.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I'm like, oh I gotta figure that out next time.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was, it was.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that was really I I had several of those later.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: I had, you know, when I when I get home and I see my 18-year-old son carrying water with a headlamp on, no power, no nothing, not seeing my family, not knowing if my house, I mean I live in Swaninova.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right, you know, so I'm I'm here managing this, and it was one disaster after another.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: Just they just kept coming.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: And going home, seeing that, making sure the family was good, you know.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: There there were several after that, but I think that was a that was a big one where it just kind of all wadded up at the same time because we're fixers.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think everybody around this table is a fixer.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: We want to put our hands on it, we want to fix it.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: I want to create a plan for tomorrow on how it's gonna stay fixed, and we're gonna maintain that.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that's our mode of operation.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: And when you have an institutionally unprecedented event like this, it breaks all that logic.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it's I I would be more worried about you if you didn't have one of those moments.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you were running and gunning like we all were.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: How about you, Chief?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, and Jeremy's right, we we're fixers, we're doers.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: We, you know, for the first week at least, probably 14 days, we were like running constantly.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it was one thing after another.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the EOC, you really were constantly making decisions, constantly making plans, communicating.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you really didn't have time to process what was going on inside your head.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, because you'd go like I would go home, put my head down, and I was out.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then as soon as I woke up, it was throw the uniform back on, go right back.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, it wasn't until the the city manager quickly got all the department directors together and we we all sat down and she asked, she was like, I want every go around the room and say like how like how are you doing?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that was that was my moment.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Especially um in talking about, you know, being from here, you n you're gonna know people.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and so I knew people that had ended up losing their life during the storm.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was talking about that and really getting to thinking about the impact that that loss had on their families and also the community.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: And just Yeah.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah just the devastation and everything.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like a a month afterwards it was almost like I got triggered by ran into a guy that's a photographer.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's a freelance photographer that I've seen at all these different sporting events over the years that I've done just kind of hey how you holding out lost the house and that was that was just it was just that was it.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah yeah so he lived right down by the uh by Azalea Park.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah so I'm like oh I'm like oh my god uh what do you what are you what are you doing?
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah he's like well you know our in-laws uh thankfully we're we're staying with them and we're just trying to figure it out yeah and I was like damn yeah and that's all you can say I mean I I think for me there was there was two significant ones for me I think the first one it started on Thursday it actually started on Wednesday before the storm is when the the precipice we get there right and and that was my you know talking to my wife and going hey you need to evacuate right and and Thursday came around and I'm like you need to evacuate and she's like if the water comes in the house I'll get on the dining room table and I'm just like I I was I was in complete meltdown mode.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: At about 11 o'clock on Thursday night I got a call from John uh Chief John Coffey from Black Mountain.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: We live in Black Mountain and uh he called and he said hey what's the situation is your wife evacuated and I said no she said she's gonna get on the dining room table if the water comes in the house and he said do me a favor and relay this message to her tell her to get a Sharpie marker and write her social security number on her forearm because she's not gonna make it and make sure she does it for your son too and I'm like okay if I call her and I say those words I will be going straight to divorce court because she will divorce me for saying something like that.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I called her and I find and I got to a point and I was like Chief Coffee says you're not gonna make it if you don't evacuate and she's like he's just being bombastic.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: And she didn't and about four o'clock that morning came around and my phone rang and it was brandy and she said we've evacuated and we're at the sitco station on Highway 9 just before I-40 there in Black Mountain and we can't get on I-40 there's waves coming off of the overpass down to the road below and the Swannanoa River had now breached that first lane onto highway nine and I didn't hear from her again until Sunday afternoon.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: It was about 430 somewhere in there and when Tank screens the phone calls he'll type the name in and it it pops up on a monitor just to my left and my wife's the only brandy I know that spells her name with two E's at the end.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I I was on the phone with a listener and I was it was starting to wrap up and I saw that Tank had been was typing and I just turned and I looked and I kind of had to do like a double take and I looked at Tank and I said is this who I think it is and he said yeah and hearing uh hearing her voice knowing that she and my son were okay and that our four dogs were okay but knowing that they rode out this entire situation with like 300 pounds of dog in a forerunner for like 10 and a half hours like you know I mean it was I the next time I saw her was um November 24th well no I'm sorry October 24th like a month later she had uh evacuated down to Atlanta.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: My brother had had come down and um from Virginia he was taken he had been taking my dad to chemotherapy and um you know it like not seeing her for those literally six weeks almost seven weeks was like so that was that was the main one and I think the the next significant one was when uh a listener called and um informed us that the Dry family had not survived and um Tank and I had had such a an interesting conversation with Michael when he called in literally moments before that house collapsed into the river and he had he was joking with us and it was like he's like you know I've needed to clean this place out for years and I guess I'm gonna lose half of it now in this flood so that takes that off of my plate and we thought you know we we kind of chuckled a little bit it was kind of hard like we just you didn't really know what attitude to take and and I just remember saying to him like Michael please keep our number close by and if you decide you want some if you want someone to come and get you and help you like at least call us and let us know that you've called them.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_03: And um finding out that he passed and then the next day finding out that ten years previous he helped my wife move.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: They went to church same church together and her his family kind of had adopted her in a sense and helped her move and helped her through a really rough time like that one sucked.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because I knew it was a hit for her too right like I'd never met this guy before never met him.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: All I knew was his voice which is and I still unfortunately we're six months later and I've not gone to sleep a single night and not woken up hearing Michael drive's voice.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: So here we are six months now and we've all had a chance to kind of look back at it a little bit now that things have you know for lack of a better term calmed down you know there's no current flooding there is wildfires.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you know always something funny to the other yeah we're we're gonna keep it interesting.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah you know we just can't have you guys just you know get out slide your laurels another kind of break is basically what they're saying.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: As we look back at it though and we get a chance to kind of reflect just a little bit what's your takeaway?
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: We'll start Chief what's your just a big big vision takeaway from the whole thing now you're looking back is it you know the vision of people coming together is it the catastrophe just whatever what's the first thing that comes to mind?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well I d I think it really speaks to our community's resiliency.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know not not just police department not just fire department but I mean you know Mark you like you truly became like a dispatch center for the community and so our our our community mobilized you know our uh especially like a lot of our uh global war on terror veterans that we have living in the community they have a special skill set and they were able to mobilize with a lot of just mountain people to create you know medical centers uh you know clearing trees out of out of the roadways clearing people's driveways uh so many churches came together the cove and the Billy Graham Center sent like they had an army of like 80 people that were out there clearing roads so it was it was amazing to see as a community our resilience.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be a lot of lessons learned from this and I think a lot of ways that that we will grow as a city as an agency and and it's really looking at also the the possibilities in the future because like our you know right now our our economic outlook at least January, February March we're you know we've been looking at how's this going to have an impact on us as a community but now those outlooks are starting to improve and folks are really starting to to bounce back and come back to Asheville.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll be interesting to see throughout the summer how uh you know the businesses will start opening back up that were within those areas and it'll it'll be neat to see our community bounce back.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: Jeremy what are you looking at?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um the big 10,000 foot view.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah telling your story is important.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the the story that we have to tell here you know you look at our community like the Chief Lamb said and I've been had the fortune of traveling around a lot teaching different classes and doing different things and our community it was almost like it happening here I think really showed the true fabric of what we're made of and sometimes that can get lost very very quickly.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that was the resilience piece of that in our community a lesser community I don't know where they are in six months compared to where we are now we're a very strong and resilient bunch.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think the other thing is I learned the definition of what help is and what help is not when folks would show up and say I'm here to help but I that's not help.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because at that point we didn't have anything to give right the folks that showed up and said I'm here to help here are the three things I've noticed what would you like and you just pick one.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need anything from you I'm gonna sleep in the parking lot and I'm gonna go to work the next day and I'll check in with you.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's help.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that was helpful.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the the kind of the last thing for me is just we have to anticipate risk and we manage that by by planning and preparedness.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you're you know you hear my voice your 72 hour kit your preparedness your everything again I'm a paid pessimist I have to be ready we have to be ready to do this again in September unfortunately and so Helene was terrible but now we know what that looks like and so just don't forget about that.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're six months away what what would you do different?
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: How are you prepared better now than you were and do you take advantage of those relationships that you made whether it's professionally whether it's personally through the fabric of our community and and reach back out to them six months later.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: Check on them now because there's a there's a lot of trauma in our community and there's a lot of hurt and I think you don't ever know what a phone call a letter a knock on the door would do for someone to just reinvigorate that a little bit this is not the last time we're gonna need each other.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that for me is kind of looking back that's kind of what I've taken.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you know there's some folks that deserve some flowers that you don't think about because at the Southern conference basketball tournament that I did they recognized different organizations or groups of whatever at different nights right and of course they recognized the police and fire and the obvious you know the EMS the rescue workers some of the ones that didn't get you know the recognition that really deserve it so line workers.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah okay people that worked in the local quarries I didn't even think about that.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't think about the local quarries they haven't you know the ones that needed to to make the build those new roads to get people to where they needed to get so so those folks even the DOT and all these different so many people the public works uh the the people in the water department some of the ones that don't get the praise all the time so if you if you guys know any of those folks absolutely yeah make sure you you say thank you to them and and mark I'll let you wrap it up then.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I think um there's a couple of takeaways for me as well I think the the the biggest takeaway for me I think personally is that I probably work with the best team uh in radio that I think I have ever worked with in my 25 years of radio.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: For music radio folks to walk into a situation like what we walked into and what they walked into once that storm had passed and the and you know the kind of that dispatch center opened up Eddie Fox, Amanda Fox, Josh Michael, Ariel Reimer, Brian Hall at the time, Jeremy Green, Tank Spencer, there was never a question of how long can you do it?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: Can you do it?
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: It was we're we've got to do this.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: This is our responsibility and they are simply the greatest team I have ever worked with that's that's probably the biggest takeaway from a radio perspective for me was that having the right people in the right place at the right time made this situation what it what it turned into.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_03: I think the second situation or or the second takeaway from me was I've never really been proud to live anywhere.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean I grew up in central Florida not a lot to brag about there right not a lot to brag about I mean a lot of headlines come out of there not good headlines Helene made me proud to live in western North Carolina.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: It made me proud of my community and it's a community that let's face it it's not necessarily about togetherness all the time right it's a very segmented community in the sense of there's a lot of different wide variety of views here and they they don't they they clash a lot sometimes that all went away and I think the ability of this community to be able to turn that light switch off and say none of that stuff matters right now.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care who you voted for, I don't care who you're going to vote for, I don't care what your favorite food is like I'm here to help I'm here to offer you whatever I can that made me really proud to live here.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's the the the other big takeaway for me is that I might not see eye to eye with all the people in our community but I'm damn proud to have them as my neighbors because I know when it comes down to it they're gonna be there and not only they be there for me but they'd be there for you and anybody else that would come along as well.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_03: Western North Carolina weathered this storm better than any other community I have ever seen and and again covering hurricanes for the first 15 years of my career in down in Florida this was in a sense a breath of fresh air to see that like there is still really good humans on this earth because hurricane recovery doesn't happen like this in Florida.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: It just doesn't so the people make the difference.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: The people in those room made the difference so Jeremy Knighton with the Asheville Fire Department Chief Lamb with the Asheville Police Department and Mark Starling with News Radio 570 WWNC.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for all just sitting around talking about uh you know a little therapy session we had there with about the uh Hurricane Helene six months later let's hope we never do this again.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah that would be good but if it comes down to it I haven't I have no doubt that the team here would be standing at the back door ready to get in and and do it all over again.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I know it's the same for all of the all of you guys as well.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's just uh it's good to know that we live in a place that there are people that will step up right and and uh Asheville in western North Carolina sure certainly did that.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sure did.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes thank you all thank you for listening to this special edition of the APD Pod Squad six months later looking back at Hurricane Helene.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: Big thank you to my guests Jeremy Knighton with the Asheville Fire Department, Chief Mike Lamb with the Asheville Police Department and Mark Starling with News Radio 570 WWNC for taking the time and sharing their thoughts today.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Rick Rice and this is the APD pot squad