Personal Experience with a Disaster
By Stephan Vithalani
My first
experience with emergency management happened in 2005 when I
volunteered for
the Water Planning and Response Team (PRT).
When volunteering and a disaster would happen, PRT members
deploy to the
affected area in support of their mission.
My first deployment came for Hurricane Dennis in the State
of Florida.
I spent about a week in Jacksonville
and when it was determined that State and stored water the Federal
Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) was enough supplies, I was able to return home. As six more tropical systems formed and were
named, it wasn’t until the call for deploying came on the ‘k’ for
Katrina.
When Hurricane
Katrina formed and was headed for the Gulf; everyone starting preparing
for the
category five hurricane. At first, the
Water PRT was headed to Florida, then possibly Alabama,
but it was decided we would not deploy and execute the mission from our
home
district in Wilmington, N.C. Water was pre-positioned but after landfall
and the size and damage of the affected areas, large quantities were
ordered. Now the task of tracking the
thousands of trucks and meeting the deadlines of reports was the
priority. What I found to be the most
difficult is the
communication of the movement of trucks.
As we would check in at the staging areas, we would find
out a certain
number of trucks had been moved and we didn’t have any knowledge of it. Finally, a few hours later a fax or email
would come confirming the move. Confusion
and chaos was the source for miscommunications.
The size of the damaged area created 250+ points of
distribution and
with not having adequate personnel in the field made it difficult in
retrieving
vital documents.
With hundreds of
thousands of papers came the task of closing out the mission. Next was the task of putting together the
puzzle of paperwork that showed routes and delivery sites of each truck
load of
water. I was actually quite impressed of
how much of the completed paperwork we had.
Another issue I learned from is that when people are
rushed, stressed,
and tired their concentration is less and individuals wrote names in
such a
manner you could not always read who was who or what was what. It has been expressed to individuals in the
field to write legibly and always put the date, time, and location of
where
they are. It was a great experience that
I am still gaining knowledge from because I am still closing out the
water
mission.