10th Anniversary of the Biggest Storm
I still remember how the water felt as I slogged down 16th street heading into the biting wind. How the grit had gotten in my water shoes and how saturated my skin felt after several hours in and out of the grimy water. The fear in my stomach as a transformer blew close by. Wondering if the electricity could travel through the water to me. Trying to breathe and see through the thick smoke coming off of the huge fire burning at the Yacht Basin.
It seems like yesterday that I felt the tiny boy’s hand in mine as I held on to he and his sister while walking chest deep in the grime next to their mom and pulling a rescue board piled with another sibling and a few belongings that they begged to bring along. Bringing them to high ground at Broadway and piling them into a waiting police car that would take them to the emergency shelter at Ball High school. Taking a moment to watch them drive off and grab an energy bar before heading to the next group a few blocks away.
Those of us that went through Hurricane Ike, and more recently through Hurricane Harvey, have memories like this ingrained into us that probably will never leave. It’s hard to believe that we’ve had another major event as we approach the 10th anniversary of the biggest storm that anyone alive remembers here.
A few years after Ike we had a city meeting to recap and use lessons learned to prepare for the next big event. As we went through the details it struck me how much better each group was prepared as a result of Ike and of what we’ve seen happen when other storms affected communities. I also noticed how many new faces were in the room as opposed to the previous years. Charlie Kelly, who was the Director of the Emergency Operations for Galveston at the time, mentioned his fear that all the event memory would be lost as people who went through the storm moved on. I’m sure lots were thinking the same thing in that room. The nice thing is that each group’s emergency action plan is much more comprehensive than what we had before. Recently we went through the exercise of revamping our hurricane response plan for the Park Board. We’re trying to make it not only a document that is actually useful for all phases of a disaster, but something that will keep institutional memory alive for our successors.
In life guarding we train to eliminating variables that can mess you up during a rescue by practicing them until your body remembers even when your brain doesn’t. If you practice and internalize all the things you can control in advance, you are better able to handle the inevitable wrinkles that arise. Rescues, like hurricanes, never go according to plan. Best to be as prepared as possible so less is left to do on the fly. What works for organizations works in each of our personal homes and lives as well.
