As Hurricane Helene ripped through Florida and continued moving through the Southeast, people from Montgomery County answered the call for help.
Helene made landfall around 11:10 p.m. on Thursday along Florida’s Gulf Coast, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Maximum sustained winds were estimated at 140 mph, the Associated Press reported Friday. Helene produced a deluge of flooding and related devastation, claiming the lives of at least 30 people, according to AP.
Help on the way
Larry Daly, a distribution of emergency supplies manager with the American Red Cross, got to Tallahassee prior to the storm making landfall.
Daly, a volunteer from King of Prussia, has been preparing “clean up kits,” which he said contain a myriad of needed items, including cleaning supplies, equipment, food, and bottled water. The supplies will be crucial for families picking up the pieces down in Florida.
“Tallahassee has about 75 percent power outages right now with all the trees and wires down,” Daly said in a phone interview from Florida Friday. “Along the coast, we have a lot of issues even getting into areas right now, but we are planning, tomorrow, we will wrap up the distribution — going out to all the communities — but right now everything is inaccessible, and a lot of outages, and a lot of … traffic lights out.”
Fellow American Red Cross Volunteer Fred Lehman, of Lansdowne, Delaware County, had been planning to get to Florida’s capital by Friday afternoon, but his first flight to Charlotte was canceled.
“I’m anxious to get there. I’m anxious to start doing the work,” Lehman said. “You get more out of this than you ever put into it. Folks are so grateful. You can imagine that yesterday they had a home, and today their home is either destroyed or compromised to the point where they can’t live there, and they’re so grateful for a bottle of water or some food.
“You wish that if you were ever in that situation people could be there for you. I get so much more out of it than I put into it that I can’t wait to get there,” he continued.
Lehman was able to book a new flight out, scheduled to depart at 4 p.m., first to Washington, D.C. and then onto Tallahassee. Once Lehman arrives, he’ll focus on logistics work at one of the American Red Cross warehouses in Florida that hold various items, including rakes, shovels, blankets, and cots. Once the trailers of supplies arrive at the warehouse, ensuring “they get distributed to the proper locations, to the kitchens, to the shelters,” is top of mind for American Red Cross volunteers.
Reward of helping others
Daly and Lehman have been involved with volunteer efforts with the American Red Cross since 2019 and 2020, respectively.
“I love it. I love every minute of it,” Lehman said. “It’s very, very challenging. … I would say the first week or two you’re probably working 18-hour days, but … it’s really rewarding. You’re not necessarily talking directly to the folks that are affected, but you know you’re supplying them stuff that they need.”
Daly agreed. “I just do it because I like helping people and it’s something that I get enjoyment out of helping others and making things right for the community,” Daly said.
They’d just come from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, doing disaster relief following the flooding devastation sustained from Hurricane Francine. Now they’ve moved onto Helene in Florida, joining hundreds of other American Red Cross volunteers and staff.
Lehman noted that three trailers with supplemental items moved out from Louisiana on Tuesday, but he wasn’t sure if they’d arrived. Once all the trailers do arrive, Lehman said the real work will begin as volunteers unload, take inventory and move the items onto trucks so they can be taken to people in need.
“I’m anxious for those trailers to arrive so I can start work,” Lehman said.
Effects of storm surge
Lehman contacted some people he knows in the area to get a sense of what he may witness. He said they relayed to him that their cars and first floor condo were flooded.
“So I expect to see a lot of that,” Lehman said.
Lehman recalled a past volunteering experience in September 2022, just 377 miles south in Fort Myers, Florida, when Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on Southwest Florida. He remembered seeing the storm surge effects, with waters reaching second-story homes.
“I expect to see a lot of the same damage, trees down. We probably won’t have power. We didn’t have power in Fort Myers for almost a week,” Lehman said, adding that “I understand a little farther south, Tampa really got hit hard. We may end up going down there.
“We’ll start in Tallahassee, it’s where the headquarters is. … We’ll go where most of the damage is, where most of the need is. They’ll move us wherever the need is greater.”
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Daly and Lehman each said they’ll stay for at least two weeks, with both agreeing to extend their volunteer work. Lehman said he was in Maui, Hawaii for two months last year after wildfires broke out on the island.
“I don’t know if I’ll be there for two months, but I’ll definitely be extend[ed] beyond two weeks. It’s all based on the need, in terms of if they need folks, I’ll stay,” Lehman said.
PECO crews headed south
While early reports indicated outage rates of more than 1 million in Florida, per the Associated Press, it had fallen to 870,418 outages as of 1:46 p.m. on Friday, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us.
Figures from poweroutage.us show South Carolina topping the charts with 1.23 million outages as of 1:46 p.m., followed by 969,275 million in Georgia, 922,842 in North Carolina, and 220,550 in Virginia.
Around 39 PECO Energy Company employees and 20 trucks left PECO’s Berwyn service building at 3 p.m. on Thursday, according to PECO Communications Manager Rachelle Rogers. The delegation made the approximately 785-mile drive to Georgia Power to assist local crews with repairing downed wires and restoring electricity.
“We understand that electricity plays a vital role in our everyday lives, which is why we do this,” Rogers said. Rogers noted that area line mechanics, fleets and other support personnel within the PECO contingent were tasked with linework and other damage remediation efforts.
“We do this to support our customers and support fellow utility companies [and this] is something that PECO has been doing for years as part of regional assistance networks,” Rogers said. “PECO and other utility companies come together to answer the call for help.”
While it’s unclear exactly how long they plan to stay, Rogers maintained “really until the work is done. They are preparing to support the efforts for days or weeks depending on the amount of damage that’s caused by the hurricane.”
Search and rescue
Additionally, five members of Montgomery County’s Urban Search and Rescue Team deployed on Thursday to North Carolina, along with other first responders from task forces from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, according to a Facebook post.
“Safe travels to our four human rescuers and K9 Memphis!” the post states.
Contributions crucial
Daly and Lehman encouraged people in the Philadelphia area to contribute to the American Red Cross in any way they can, whether it be financially or by volunteering. Call 1-800-RED-CROSS or visit redcross.org for more information.
“That’s something they could really help us with right now. We need a lot of help financially,” Daly said.
“Without the volunteers the Red Cross could not do what they do,” Lehman said. “You hear so much bad in the world … you meet people like this and you’re all together to do something good for people and it makes you feel good.”
