BLM firefighters return from Gulf Coast mission
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 2:19 PM PDT
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| Larry Meyer | Argus Observer
Ron Strohmeyer, who accompanied Snake River Valley firefighters to the Gulf Coast for hurricane relief work, shows the type of supplies they handed out to storm victims. These supplies were in the BLM warehouse in Vale. |
Larry Meyer Argus Observer
VALE
Normally United States Bureau of Land Management Snake River Valley firefighters get in the news when they are gearing up for the fire season or responding to wildfires.
However, battling blazes is not the only thing the firefighters do. About 80 Snake River Valley firefighters were deployed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to the Gulf Coast to help get supplies to storm victims.
Accompanying the crews was Ron Strohmeyer, interagency resource representative with the Vale District, Bureau of Land Management.
"We took four crews down," he said. "There is one crew still there."
Their main mission, he said, was to set up bases to distribute supplies to those in need. Their biggest difficulty may have been just getting there. The crews flew to Ft. Smith, Ark., where they were bused to the New Orleans-area, a ride that took 10 to 15 hours, depending which route a bus driver took. One bus driver got lost and was driving his group toward Dallas.
"It was a long trip," Strohmeyer said.
The first stop was at Hammond, about 50 miles north of New Orleans and the closest town to the coast that still had utilities operating. They worked mainly in and around Harahan and Kenner, both suburban communities in the New Orleans metro area.
"Our first assignment was set up a base camp," Strohmeyer said. While they were right by the Mississippi River, the SRV crew was out of the flood zone.
"We were a support group," he said, adding they worked in support of the National Guard, particularly from Pennsylvania. They set up supply "pods," or distribution stations and handed out food, water and things people needed until a military unit came to relieve them, and crews moved on to set up another pod. Other tasks were to clean up warehouses where supplies would be brought in, then distributed out to the different pods. People, Strohmeyer said, would be lined up for a block or two to get food or water. Everything was on long tables and people would walk by and pick up what they needed.
The hurricanes proved to be an equal opportunity employer when it came to distributing tragedy, he said.
"Some people looked like middle-class people," he said. "Others you could tell they had rough time. Pretty much everybody had to come to the pods to get supplies."
They included the very old people to babies, Strohmeyer said.
"They were cleaning up," he said. "People were very upbeat. They were grateful to see help on the way."
Members of the SRV crews are from the western Treasure Valley, from the Nampa-Caldwell area to Vale, Strohmeyer said, and were called out by an incident management team.
"You can be called for all sorts of things," Debbie Lyons, public affairs officer for the Vale BLM district said. Strohmeyer noted that SRV crews were called to help in the recovery effort following the last shuttle disaster.
"They are always on emergency call," Lyons said. There were all sorts of firefighting groups down there, Strohmeyer said - BLM to Forest Service crews from back East.
"We see them out on fires," he said. "We already know them."
The main body went down Sept. 7 and came back Sept. 18, and crew members hope to be called back, he said. The crew still down on the Gulf Coast is in Biloxi, Miss.
No Dhimmi wrote on Aug 14, 2009 9:38 PM:
And this isn't "racist," because Islam is not a race, anymore than Communism or Nazism are races, both of which killed far fewer people than Islam.
Disgusting. "