A lot has happened since my last post. I was hired on full-time as the Heart of Tennessee Chapter's Emergency Services Director. I've left Tullahoma, moved into a quiet one-bedroom apartment in Murfreesboro, and had a couple of break-ups... But that's another story.
I was replaced in Tullahoma by a new VISTA named Chris Robins. His training, development, and work with the community on behalf of the Red Cross has been fast and furious and he has already accomplished much. This weekend was going to be a great leap forward for both of us and for our Chapter as we both planned to attend Red Cross Disaster Instructor training in Nashville. This would mean that Murfreesboro would have one more instructor and, more importantly, Chris could schedule and teach disaster classes in Tullahoma at his own discretion. The leash would be off.
Also scheduled for this weekend was a Red Cross emergency preparedness day at the local Church of Later Day Saints in Murfreesboro. This was to involve two Disaster Classes, two CPR classes, a blood drive, and more.
Also scheduled for today was an event we had been planning for months. We called it The Mash Bash. Approximately two years after Heart of Tennessee Chapter took over the old Treis County Chapter in Tullahoma, the dust was settled. This event was a party at the historic George Dickel distillery to raise funds and, more importantly re-introduce ourselves to the community. The major first steps toward growing our role and response capabilities in the Tullahoma area.
This past Monday, I received a text message that issued a severe thunderstorm watch for this weekend, i.e. today. Needless to say, it didn't seem like a very high priority and it seemed that it should interfere very little with events in the next 24 hours.
Yesterday, this became a tornado watch. National Weather Service issued a watch stating a 45% chance of tornadoes in the Middle Tennessee Region. That's us.
The LDS church cancelled everything except the blood drive; something of a weight off of my shoulders. After a quick call around to my county EMA directors to touch base, it was clear that the right thing to do was for Chris and I to forgo the DIST (Disaster Instructors) class. The Mash Bash remained on schedule. Greg King, the Chapter exec., and his committee, determined that we had too much invested in the event and there was too much depending on it.
Greg is a Middle Tennessee native and has seen a lot of this. He has a lot of experience and is well aware of the conditions of tornadoes; knowing that even though these conditions make for certain possibilities, the probabilities of their impacts are another matter.
I told Greg that I could not attend the Mash Bash - that we needed to have somebody minding the shop, just in case. "How would it look," I reasoned "if a tornado did touch down in our home county, and the entire Red Cross Chapter was in a satellite county, partying, raising money, and sipping whiskey?" Of course, that's something of an exaggeration; negative spin. But the truth is, no matter how bad it might play in the press, it would have made for a poor state of readiness.
I told Chris that he would spend the day at the office in Tullahoma until the Mash Bash, and that he should attend, while staying in contact with the Coffee County EMA director. Meanwhile, I spent much of the day in the office, catching up on work, checking the weather online and walking outside to observe the clouds every fifteen minutes or so. I also spent some time with the Rutherford County EMA director, Roger Allen, discussing the weather forecast, possible impact, and brushing up on our emergency communications, radios, etc. Yesterday - Friday afternoon - I attended Roger's staff meeting to show the colors, get an understanding of their plans, and let the EMA know that we were on board.
Periodic thunderstorms throughout the day. Around 4:30 pm, I left the office and came home. Mostly more of the same. Weather channel, internet forecasts, stepping outside to look at cloud movement, and a few near-naps on the couch.
Tonight, around 10 pm, Roger Allen called me and said he was shutting down and that there was no further threat to the area. It was just at the end of HBO's premier of "You Don't Know Jack," which was a great movie about Jack Kevorkian, featuring a friend of mine and great actor, Delaney Williams.
Chris and I missed the DIST course which could have been a huge step forward for us in training volunteers. I missed the Mash Bash, which I really wanted to attend, which I helped to plan, and for which I even came up with the name.
Instead of sipping George Dickel whiskey at the George Dickel distillery, I'm now sipping Jack Daniels green label and watching HBO.
More importantly, this situation provided me with the chance to develop my relationship with Roger Allen. I'm fairly inexperienced in this field. Roger is a veteran. But it is paramount that our offices be able to work together, and that there be as little gap in communication as possible. It was important to show that Red Cross was engaged.
Most importantly, Red Cross was both prepared and ready. These words seem synonymous. As I have learned, preparedness and readiness are two different things. Allow me to indulge in the metaphor of an Olympic sprinter:
Preparedness is the years of training and conditioning that feed the dreams of a gold medal. Readiness is the stretching, the focus, the placement of feet in the blocks, the anticipation of the gun when you're on the starting line.
16 years ago