By Chris Murray, Director | Pamlico County Emergency Management
WESTERN NC – Pamlico County Emergency Management hosts a ‘Special Operations Task Force,’ which consists of various highly technical skilled specialty credentialed members from Pamlico County Fire Departments, Aurora Fire Department, and Pamlico County Sheriff’s Office.
We are a Type II State Deployable Team for NC Emergency Management and can be activated to go anywhere as requested – including out of state.
We were activated on Friday 27 September for an immediate response to Rutherford County NC for Hurricane Helene. Our Swiftwater team consisting of 13 personnel departed Pamlico County and wasted no time responding to Rutherford County. Arriving at Rutherford County EOC, we checked in and were assigned to Forest City Fire Department as our base of operations.
Once we established our Satellite communications and cellular connections, our equipment was checked and I briefed our team on our assigned mission – which was to push into Lake Lure and Chimney Rock NC who were reporting catastrophic damages and no communications or infrastructure.
Forest City Fire assigned two rescue technicians to assist our team with the lay of the land and at first light Saturday, Sept 28, we embarked to the targeted area via a winding mountain road named Bills Creek Road. It took us around 4 hours to cut our way through the downed trees and power-lines to reach Lake Lure.
Hundreds (maybe even thousands) of trees were strewn about everywhere on our route into the villages. Once we arrived at Lake Lure, we determined the only access was crossing the broad river and the lake. The lake was literally chocked full of debris and not navigable. The river was running as expected but on the lower end was sil
ted up so deep with mud that our boat crews beached their boats and a team of 3 personnel SWAM, WADED, and CRAWLED the bank into Chimney Rock Village to be our eyes on the other side.
These were the first people from “outside” of the village to gain access since the storm arrived.
Several of us worked with a local ‘Good Samaritan’ with equipment and began clearing the Chimney Rock bridge to gain access and egress. Our first team in the village immediately radioed that they were met with folks needing evacuation and were teaming up with Chimney Rock FD personnel to get to a landing zone and start providing information for aircraft and evacuations.
Around noon we were able to open a single lane of the bridge and gain access into the village via UTV’s. We were immediately met with citizens wanting to evacuate and a majority of them were on foot and able to walk the bridge out. Once in the actual Main Street of the village, we were met with apocalyptic type destruction. Complete buildings missing, collapsed and the same for most of the residential structures.
All infrastructure was either damaged or missing, including the main roads and secondary bridges. Communications was “ZERO” with the outside world except for radio communications with our team members and local responders. We spent until dark Saturday providing evacuations, door to door checks, and made a couple of actual “Rescues” of elderly folks who were basically stuck in the 2nd floor of their businesses and just rode it out.
Our numbers and data that we were able to keep track of during that operational period were somewhere around 250 persons contact made, 106 persons evacuated, 4 rescues made. This was a huge success in the first push! There was basically nothing left of the village and citizens were essentially trapped as the bridge was completely blocked with debris, the main highway was completely missing – replaced by a treacherous ‘river rock bed’ all the way to Bat Cave NC.
On Sunday, we were joined back in the village by NC-Task Force 10 (Greenville Fire & New Bern Fire) along with FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Team Michigan Task Force 1 to help assist with rescues and evacuations of citizens who were again basically stranded due to the new size of the river, the roads and infrastructure no longer being there, and some of them even had collapsed residences but were spared – thanks to rescuing out.
One of our UAV pilots was able to provide aerial reconnaissance and determine that there were at least 7-10 persons stranded at the Esmorelda Inn located just outside of Chimney Rock towards Bat Cave. With this intel, NCTF-10 and Michigan TF-1 deployed personnel to make a rough 2 mile hike on the newly created river rock bed up to the Esmorelda to rescue and evacuate the persons stranded there.
Pamlico Team members provided evacuation transportation and accountability of the victims as they were escorted back to Chimney Rock Village. During this mission 9 persons were safely brought out and evacuated. At the same time, Pamlico Team, NC National Guard and Michigan TF-1 established a “High Line” rope system across the Broad River from Chimney Rock Village to Southside Drive for rescue and evacuations. This area was only accessible by crossing the Broad River, which really changed landscape, depths and obstacles after the ravaging flood.
A High Line system is an technical system of ropes, knots, pulleys, clutches and anchor points to allow a single point of control to use mechanical advantage to move people and objects across or over things. We utilized this system to ferry personnel over in rescue rafts and then they were able to reach victims and ferry them and their animals back across the river in a controlled manner to safety. We made another 7-8 rescue and evacuations that morning to include persons and animals. The rest of the day was spent reaching areas up the village to check on residents who didn’t want to evacuate, or we provided transportation and evacuation for them at their request. There was a lot going on and a lot of moving parts for the first 48 hours post storm in this area.
Don’t believe everything you hear or see on social media and network media regarding certain situations. We were there and witnessed a lot of good work and a lot of human compassion happening up in ‘them hills.’ We all went into the situation as individual teams but quickly came out as one unit there to handle the assigned mission. I will tell you that none of the Team Members involved consider themselves heroes. They consider it their job that they have prepared and trained for years prior. We were tasked with an assignment, and responded to the assignment very well. We made it our side mission to give the people of the affected areas we were in some hope. We have been a recipient of “help” and assistance numerous times in Pamlico County for hurricane responses. and when we have the chance to pay it back or pay it forward, we make every effort possible to do so.
I could probably write a short book on things we saw, cards we were dealt, and actions that were taken.
Chris Murray, CFI
Task Force Leader
Director of Emergency Management
