A Deadly Season

When disaster strikes, Americans turn to their emergency services. They look to law enforcement to restore order, the fire service to save property and lives, EMS to provide speedy medical assistance. But what happens when those emergency personnel are every bit as impacted by a community’s misfortune as those they’re sworn to help?

Civilians and emergency providers alike experienced that dilemma last summer in Florida. And then they experienced it again…and again…and again. They experienced it four times, in fact, as a series of powerful hurricanes raked the Sunshine State over a tumultuous six-week span.

The hurricanes in Florida wrecked stationhouses alongside residences and businesses; kept ambulances and engines off the roads; and visited personal destruction on the homes and families of the EMTs and firefighters toiling to assist others in similar need. Physically, emotionally and by any other barometer, it was a trying time to be an EMS professional.

“People were on edge,” says Lori Recca, who faced two of the storms head-on as EMS division chief for Stuart Fire and Rescue, which serves a hard-hit town of 15,000 between Fort Pierce and West Palm Beach on the Atlantic coast. “Our people did a great job, but it was hard. They were working so many hours, then they were going home and trying to deal with their own issues, their own homes, their own families.”

The Stuart area was hit twice—first by Frances, then again, three weeks later, by Jeanne.

“With the first storm, I was without power in my own home for 12 days,” says Recca. “With the second, I was without power for three. That was a common thing for many people. They would stay with their friends or relatives, or whatever they had to do.”

And they would work. Following storms of this magnitude, no matter your personal circumstances, there’s plenty to be done.

Charley

The first of the hurricanes was Charley. The strongest of the four upon arrival—in fact, the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. since Andrew in 1992—Charley was Category 4 (Category 5 is the strongest under the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale), with winds approaching 150 mph, when it arrived at the barrier islands off Cape Coral, adjacent to Fort Myers on the southwest coast, on August 13. It followed hot on the heels of Tropical Storm Bonnie, which had hit the state’s panhandle area just 36 hours earlier. It had been 98 years since two storms had hit the state so close together.

Charley’s landfall brought a seven-foot storm surge in Fort Myers, and storm tides (the combination of normal tide levels plus storm surge) up to 13 feet above mean sea level along parts of the southwest coast. Charley proceeded across the state, crossing Orlando and emerging around Daytona Beach—with sustained winds still around 70 mph—some eight hours later.

The hurricane wreaked major havoc upon Lee and Charlotte counties before weakening as it moved inland. Charlotte County Fire-EMS saw damage to seven of its 13 stations, as well as its main headquarters.

“Station No. 1, which is our busiest station, right in the central part of town, was pretty much totally destroyed,” says department spokesperson Dee Hawkins, EMT-P. “Station No. 12 suffered a tremendous impact; the roof in the bay came off. Station No. 7 was a total loss. And there were other minor damages to some of the stations—windows being blown out, things like that—and our main headquarters took a bit of a hit too.”

After making sure their apparatus was fully fueled and stocked—part of the department’s normal preparations when a hurricane approaches—Charlotte providers rode out the storm in the department’s newer stations, which are rated to withstand stronger winds than some of the older ones, which leaders had already been looking to replace. Personnel huddled under mattresses, away from windows, and kept in radio contact.