Sunday September 14, 2008

We're still working 24 hours a day, shifts of 12 hours and 12 hours on standby. I came into the office from Adam's house where I tried to sleep again. He still does not have any power, which also means that he has no water because they are on a well. He has a generator which runs a couple of fans into the living room, making it a little more bearable. I still wake in a pool of sweat, but its better than nothing at all and would be better than staying at my house.

I took a nice shower in the Police station. Luckily for us a shower was provided in the bathroom. It seems like a month since I've felt warm water, but its only been two days.

I was teamed up with Steve Burt, our newest member of the Police Dept. Steve is a nice man, but very slow, both in his driving but especially in his report writing. I tried to take as many calls as he did, just so he wouldn't get bogged down in reports, especially since the computer system is so messed up after the storm. The CAD system has not worked well since we went on generator power. The battery back-up system sees every blip in the power grid as a shut down, so it keeps kicking on, which causes the CAD to constantly go down. I had been using Ethan's Blackberry phone as my modem to link my computer in the car to the network, but last night he came by Adam's house and took the phone back. One of the main problems with the system is that the generator is under-sized, so every time the air conditioner cycles, the generator slows down causing the network to go up and down. Ethan found one problem in the generator was the outside floodlights on the building. He learned that by turning these lights off, it kept the generator functioning properly, but the Chief called the office when he noticed the lights off and insisted the lights be left on and said he would rather have the lights on than having the CAD system running. I don't know what his thinking is.....

I took the only burglary report of the evacuation, a home burglary where the thieves ransacked the house and stole several guns. Not bad, considering so many people were out of town. It's sad that some people take advantage of these situations. I hope there's a special place in Hell for people who loot and steal after a disaster. I intend to work hard on locating these people and putting them in jail!

The gas stations began reopening today. The Chevron on 1128 and Hwy. 6 was the first and had traffic backed up almost a mile from the store. It really didn't take that long to get things arranged and organized, and I had lots of help from the people that hang out at the store. I "deputized" Jennifer Thomas, the daughter of one of my coffee-drinking buddies at the store. She did a wonderful job of moving people around the lot so they could get gas. I did hear that she had a little run-in with one of the night shift officers over a difference of opinion of how the traffic should be run. I wasn't there, so I can't make a comment but she ran the show all day long and we didn't have any problems.

One more night at Adam's house. Before I got off work, Adam asked me to come by and get some gas for the generator. By that time, the Chevron had sold out and no one else in town had gas, so I asked the Chief if I could buy a gallon or two from the city. He said that if we had to, to use a siphon hose and take some gas out of the patrol unit, but sometime during the night, Adam and Mike found some gas and brought it by and fired the generator up again.

Until the next one.....