48 Hours With FEMA Team in Mid-Atlantic

Sept. 21, 2003
Skimming just a few feet above ground and water, Bill Hines leans out the opened door of a helicopter. Oblivious to the roaring engines, he scribbles notes and shoots pictures that chronicle the ravaged coastal landscape below.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Skimming just a few feet above ground and water, Bill Hines leans out the opened door of a helicopter. Oblivious to the roaring engines, he scribbles notes and shoots pictures that chronicle the ravaged coastal landscape below.

Hurricane Isabel has reduced houses and trailer parks to debris. Rains have deluged farmers' fields. Rivers lap at their banks, threatening to flood.

Flying aerial surveillance in a 40-year-old refurbished helicopter that once saw action in Israel's Six Day War is just fine for Hines, a homebuilder from Dunbar, W.Va.

``The experience is extremely fulfilling,'' Hines says, as the chopper bumps through a stiff wind.

Hines put himself at ground zero of the storm. Just a few days before, he was back at a West Virginia construction site, nailing drywall for his contracting business.

But he traded that in to deploy with one of three storm-chasing teams of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The trained volunteers go out on short notice to America's worst disasters. They are the responders making the initial, rapid assessments of who needs help first and which equipment is needed most urgently.

They wear jeans, sweat shirts and blue T-shirts with the FEMA logo. Their work is adrenaline-driven, even though most have seen disasters far worse than Isabel.

At the State Police gym converted to FEMA's command post in Virginia's capital, disaster specialist Dick Harrington gets the latest dose of bad news.

``The local cell phone system just took a dump,'' a colleague tells him.

Harrington smiles.

``This energizes me. I enjoy the challenge. I'm just a glutton for punishment,'' the 63-year-old retired Air Force veteran says.

Just a few days before, he was 2,000 miles away, in his Nebraska home. Then the familiar call came, and he grabbed the handy suitcase that is always packed for the next adventure.

Past calls have taken him to Guam after a typhoon, Kansas City after an ice storm, Missouri after a tornado and Louisiana after a tropical storm.

Disaster is his second career now, and Harrington knows logistics. He coordinates FEMA disaster personnel during the chaos, making sure communications equipment, computers and supplies are ready.

Within hours, FEMA's disaster response team will have relief items on the move: ice, bottled water, cots, blankets, portable toilets and generators, many stored nearby for quick use.

But while FEMA's specialists are responding to flooding, power outages and wind damage, public relations staff members are preparing for something new: a visit by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to check on FEMA's response to the first disaster on his watch.

FEMA, once independent, now is part of the 22-agency department.

Ask any FEMA official about becoming part of the department, and the prospect of extra resources comes up.

``Does that look like a bureaucracy?'' asks FEMA spokesman Marty Bahamonde, who was handling Ridge's tour.

One of FEMA's top East Coast coordinators, Sandra Coachman, adds: ``We now have one extra boss. That's the way we look at it.''

Since he awakened at 5 a.m. Friday, Blue Team leader David Fukutomi has thought less about Ridge's visit and more about the ``flood fight.'' That is FEMA's way of describing efforts to contain rising waters before they flood low-lying communities.

Fukutomi's team makes sure that sandbags, sand and the equipment to fill them get to the right place at the right time.

Fukutomi, of Camarillo, Calif., always keeps a duffel bag on wheels fully packed and has a box with extra clothes that can be mailed to him. ``I find whole new ways to work with dirty clothes,'' he says.

For Isabel, team members at the Richmond gym sit at long tables beneath basketball rims. Grouped by specialties, they huddle around their laptops.

With the hurricane bearing down Thursday night, deputy team leader Nancy Ward issues a stern warning.

If a responder could not be found the next morning, Ward says, ``We will go to the State Police to find you. We will not take resources from them (the State Police) while you're at Burger King getting breakfast.''

She did not have to worry. The fast-food place, and everything else in the area, had no power.

Team coordinators got good news at its midmorning briefing Friday: some heavy equipment stored in North Carolina may not be needed in that state. Other mid-Atlantic states had less damage than expected, so resources for hard-hit Virginia will not be diverted.

Team briefings are military-like, with pointed questions and quick answers.

-``Emergency services? ``Right now, there are no issues.''

-Any danger of Mosquito-born illnesses? ``It's too early for that.''

-Military aircraft? Plans are being made.

After the meeting, one participant offers an additional thought. What about hazardous waste?

``Any information we get on hazardous waste, we need to know that,'' says John Connolly, the deputy operations chief who normally works in FEMA's Philadelphia office.

Dan Best and several specialists crowd around a wall map of Virginia. A Blue Team member from Kansas City, Best tells colleagues, ``Everything I'm hearing is, `Out of power, out of power, out of power.'''

The hardest hit areas are familiar to an agency with a keen memory of disasters past. ``The track and path is a combination of (Hurricanes) Floyd and Fran,'' Best explains. ``The areas got heavy wind and rain damage in the same combinations. It helps us anticipate the eventual needs.''

Lou Botta, from FEMA's Philadelphia office, is trying to find a location for a field office deep inside the disaster territory. No detail is too small to consider.

``There has to be accessibility for the handicapped,'' he tells colleagues. ``We'll need parking spaces to off-load.''

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