News

All city staff repurposed in disaster recovery

City Manager John Connet

By Bill Moss, Published: October 2, 2024

Thirty-five city employees filled every seat in the training room of Fire Station 1, wearing reflective vests, jeans and T-shirts with a city emblem, ballcaps. Here were firefighters and cops, as one might expect, but at the 5 o’clock update at the emergency operations center the three dozen city workers of every rank were there in their new role: disaster recovery and relief.

Here, too, is one more dramatic shift in the world post Helene. A week earlier, the professionals in this room would have been engaged in regular duties — taking in new zoning requests, doing legal work, running the personnel office, taking care of garbage collection, fixing potholes, running the water and sewer plant. Now they were all repurposed as part of the city’s response to the worst natural disaster to hit the N.C. mountains in recorded history.

From lower ranking city employees to the city manager himself, the emergency response team has been on duty since Thursday night 12 hours on and 12 hours off, many sleeping in shifts on blowup mattresses in offices at the fire station.

At the 5 o'clock briefing, they presented the lay of the land.

Firefighters identified 152 units of housing that needed a wellness check because of flooding, Assistant Fire Chief Justin Ward said. Calls for service were  way down from the peak during the storm. The department was working to secure radios for public works “so they can have some comms (communications), especially with phone systems going like they are.” Phones, internet, text had been down all day Tuesday.

Chief Blair Myhand reported that he had put in a request to the state emergency operations center for backup officers but of course had no luck talking with anyone since phone systems had been out all day. “The crews that we have now will be leaving Friday so we want to get crews in on Friday when we anticipate more traffic,” he said. “Our calls for service were pretty heavy this morning. We had a pedestrian crash at one of the gas stations. We had other crashes.” (The gas shortage was creating numerous problems. Some motorists desperate to fill up spotted tankers and tried to follow them to stations.)

Public Service Director Brett Detwiler reported that water service had been restored to Fletcher, Edneyville and Saluda. At the wastewater treatment plant, significant electrical and collection system repairs are needed. The collection system will need major repairs.

When he took the floor as the session closed, City Manager John Connet said the larger picture is that the city has made substantial investment over the past five years in police, fire, public works and utility personnel, plus equipment and capital buildings, including the brand new fire station pressed into service as an emergency operations center after the city operations center on Williams Street flooded.

“We didn’t know when it would be, right? You harden your community for the time of need and I think it’s paying off at this point," he said. "We’re not perfect. We still have weaknesses in our system but I think we’re functioning really well because of the leadership of the city council and the leadership of this team.”

He made the point that “the network we’ve built outside of Hendersonville is paying off — thank you Gaston County. Thank you guys for coming,” he said, pointing to two volunteers from the city. As early as Friday morning, Connet heard from officials from Wilmington offering to share what they had learned from dealing with FEMA.