Niceville Aids Hurricane Helene Victims

Christopher Saul
September 30, 2024
4:43 pm
Crestview, Fort Walton Beach, Hurricanes, Niceville, Public Safety

In Brief:

Niceville, Crestview, Fort Walton Beach, and North Bay fire departments have deployed teams to assist in Hurricane Helene recovery efforts in Blountstown.
Local firefighters face rough conditions, including living in tents, eating rationed food, and participating in body recovery, while others cover shifts through mandatory overtime.
FEMA will reimburse the fire departments for their personnel and resources deployed, ensuring support both in the impacted areas and back home.

The winds and rain, flooding, and tornadoes associated with Hurricane Helene have rescinded back into the atmosphere above the southeastern United States – but the effects on local first responders in Okaloosa County have just begun.

More than 100 people died as a result of the storm, which came ashore to the southeast of Tallahassee late last week.

Firefighters and other first responders from Niceville, Crestview, Fort Walton Beach, and the North Bay Fire Departments have taken equipment and personnel to the east as a part of a strike team that responds to hurricanes and other disasters.

In this case it is much better to give than to receive. Many towns, cities and counties across Florida are a part of a region-wide mutual aid agreement. The basics: If you get hit by a hurricane, we help you. If we get hit, you help us.

“When we had [Hurricanes] Ivan and Opal, people came from all over Florida, all over the country to come and help us,” said longtime Niceville Fire Chief Tommy Mayville, “We had people come from as far away as South Carolina and New York.” Help, Mayville noted “has been given and received.”

Currently, a team made up of Niceville firefighters and one truck – as well as fire crew members from other local fire departments – have deployed to a staging area in the city of Blountstown. They’re primarlily tasked, for the moment, in a support role for other first responders in the area.

The shortage of manpower due to the deployment gets made up, though. Other firefighters get called in for mandatory overtime to fill in the empty slots on the duty roster back in the Twin Cities area of Niceville and Valparaiso. Scrupulous notes need to be made – as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will reimburse the various responders who send firefighters and other first responders for their efforts both in areas affected and indirectly affected (like Niceville, Valparaiso and Okaloosa County).

Conditions

The firefighters from Niceville’s Fire Department aren’t exactly experiencing vacation-like conditions. “It’s rewarding, in a sense, but there is a lot of sacrifice that goes with it,” Chief Mayville added. Rough living is a hallmark of hurricane response. It’s a combination of living rough and an extreme Boy Scout campout. Chief Mayville notes several factors lend it an extreme air. “It’s not like you are staying at some motel. You’re in a tent. You don’t get to go to McDonald’s because there’s nothing open. You eat rationed food. There’s just a lot of sacrifice that goes with it,” Mayville said. Deployments with regional strike teams last two weeks and are typically mosquito and gnat-heavy affairs for the first responders on the assignments. “Sometimes you’re in staging [a support role], and it’s not bad, and sometimes you’re in in the mix of things that are terrible. Sometimes there’s a body recovery. There’s a lot that goes into it. It’s nothing glamor[ous].

As of 930 AM on Monday, September 30, Florida Power and Light reported several hundred outages outstanding in the area between Tallahassee and Jacksonville, near Helene’s path. The largest cities with multiple outages included Live Oak and Lake City.

The capital city did not sustain long-lasting power outages – and the city’s electricity cooperative is up and running, according to their outage map here.