At 1400 hours this afternoon, our personnel that had been deployed to western North Carolina returned home safely. They are tired, sore, banged up and bruised but in good spirits and happy to be home. Running chainsaws and clearing trees using manual labor for five days in a row, you expect some tired and sore muscles.
While deployed, our personnel helped to move cases of water, clear roads, get the water plant folks access to some valves, checked some areas for access, cleared some driveways for elderly folks that had no way to get out for food or medications, filled barricades and washed away some of the mud, assisted some USAR and cadaver teams to gain access into vehicles and structures and helped to dig for missing people.
A lot of hard, strenuous work but work that has to be done and they are glad that they could help in some small way.
We often joke that there's no 912, only 911 so when Orange Rural Firefighters get a task, they see it through to the end. Their dedication and determination to helping their community and every community they deploy into is inspiring. Their compassion and hard work sets them apart from many others that put on turn out gear.
We are proud of our folks and glad they are home safe.
The common theme in their stories this afternoon was that pictures don't even scratch the surface of telling how bad the devastation and destruction truly is so please continue to support and pray for western North Carolina.