Photo By Ensign Margaret Taylor | North Carolina Army National Guard Sgt. Charlie Miller (far right), an infantryman...... read more read more
RIEGELWOOD, N.C. -- For Sgt. Charlie Miller and his team of North Carolina guardsmen, their morning on Sept. 23 started with breakfast at the Acme-Delco-Riegelwood fire station. Then they all went to a worship service at the Baptist church down the street, just before a barricade on 87 South.
During the service, the congregation repeatedly thanked them and the emergency service professionals for all they’d done in the week since Hurricane Florence roared through.
A tearful local expressed her gratitude before the church, so choked up she almost couldn’t speak, but still told the story of how the rescuers had helped her just the day before with a massive tree that had fallen through her home.
The local fire chief also got up, declaring he’s never worked with a more professional, friendly bunch. The rescue teams came from all over: from Lumberton and Kernersville in North Carolina, as well as Illinois, Florida and even overseas. He said he’d welcome them back as neighbors any time.
After church and back at the fire station, Miller’s boss told him that he and his team needed to pack up to go to Whiteville.
“What for?” Miller asked.
To go home, hopefully, she told him.
Miller’s face split into a smile. “My wife will be happy.”
Miller and his team, all infantrymen from B Company, 1st Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment out of Lumberton – a town that saw its own share of flooding -- had been camped out at the ADR fire station in Riegelwood for more than a week before finally getting a chance to go home. During that time, they helped firefighters and swift water rescue teams comb through the local community to pluck people from the swelling floodwaters of Hurricane Florence.
Their determination and heart made the mission possible and left its mark on both the community and the civilian rescuers they worked alongside all week.
“Everybody worked well together; we got everything accomplished,” said Boyd Hart, the battalion chief from the Kernersville fire department. “All the crews, Sgt. Miller’s crew and all that we worked with, they’ve been great to work with. Anything we ask, they do.”
Every day, the staff at the station would meet up in the morning to pray before delivering a situational briefing and distributing tasks, also handling any emergency calls as they came in, Hart said. Tasks included patrolling flooded out, barricaded roads; helping residents leave when mandatory evacuation orders were published; rescuing stranded travelers who got in too deep. Water rescues could involve response teams of up to 30 people.
While the civilian rescuers used flat-bottom motorboats to navigate the submerged community, their firetrucks couldn’t handle the depth, Hart said.
That’s where Miller and his team came in. Their high-clearance trucks had no problem in the water, and once they even towed out a firetruck after its engine got swamped.
“It was a new experience for me working side by side with them, but they were one of the best assets we had,” said Mike Curtin, a swift water rescue team member with Illinois Task Force 1 out of Wheeling, Illinois, about working with the National Guardsmen. “They worked from sunup to sundown – beyond sundown. They were nonstop: indefatigable.”
Curtin said he was particularly impressed when he helped Miller and his team unload supplies from a military helicopter. Curtin had never done something like that before. When he saw their professionalism and how the National Guardsmen were doing business, he took his cues from them.
“They were hard chargers, real professionals,” Curtin said. “It’s been a really positive experience for me here. We came from different parts of the state, from different parts of the country, but we felt like we were right at home. It was a good brotherhood.”
| Date Taken: | 09.24.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 09.24.2018 11:21 |
| Story ID: | 294121 |
| Location: | RIEGELWOOD, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Hometown: | KERNERSVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Hometown: | LUMBERTON, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Hometown: | WHEELING, ILLINOIS, US |
| Web Views: | 724 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Nonstop: A story from behind the scenes in North Carolina, by ENS Margaret Taylor, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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