Arlington County Government, VA Most Recent, 18 Dec 2017

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From YouTube: Arlington Stories |Hurricane Maria hits home for Arlington Police

Description

Twelve Arlington County Police officers volunteered and deployed to Puerto Rico to assist with law enforcement resources in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The officers deployed in three staggered teams between November 10 – December 18, 2017, and served the Puerto Rico community for sixteen days each. The request for assistance came through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), which is the national emergency management mutual aid system that facilitates state-to-state disaster assistance. Upon arrival to the island, ACPD officers were sworn into service as peace officers. Their mission was to provide traffic control at critical intersections impacted by power outages, relieving this burden from the local officers who can now focus on other law enforcement responsibilities. Each of our three teams provided traffic direction at the intersection of Route 66 and Route 3 in the town of Rio Grande. Throughout their deployment, they worked 12-hour shifts in service to the Puerto Rico community and were joined by other Virginia Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) teams from Prince William and Hampton, as well as teams from, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Florida, Houston and Montana.

“I am proud that our officers are willing to dedicate their time to provide the citizens of Puerto Rico with an added sense of security in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria,” said Police Chief M. Jay Farr. “Our officers take an oath to serve and protect and their willingness to deploy shows their commitment and dedication, not just to the Arlington County community, but to citizens everywhere.”

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As Hurricane Maria was approaching, there was, there was no doubt that you know it. It was gonna hit the island I.

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Moved to the US and 84 from Puerto Rico I basically grew up there. Every year, I visit the island and I've I, basically established two homes. I had my mom living there in our house, and my mom is 75 years old, she's asthmatic, so not having electricity, not having her air conditioning her oxygen supply, just you know, could have been, could have been very deadly for her.

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My first reaction was to get her on a plane and get her out before the airport's closed, but she's been through some of those, and she just never knew that it was gonna, be this bad, so at least I made sure that she had somebody staying with her. We were on the phone all the way to 30 minutes before the actual impact happened in our town. Once the winds starting started to pick up, the the phone connection was was gone.

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Her companion had to save mine of leaving a message on her greeting on her cell phone. Basically, she says it's 9 o'clock in the morning now and it's getting really bad I'm gonna be losing my cell phone charged soon, but want everybody to know that at this time we're ok. So that was the last I heard about my mom 9 o'clock in the morning on the 20th of September. At the end, they were just praying that they could just survive.

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That period of waiting was very, very emotional. You don't know what's going on, you want to hope for the best, but inadvertently your mind takes you to the worst-case scenario. She.

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Had a friend who was a churchgoer offered to take her to towns over on the highway to park the vehicle- and that was the only tower that was actually working at that time and she was able to make the phone call. It was a quick. It was a quick call but good enough for us to communicate that she was ok good enough for her for me to tell her that I'm doing everything possible to to get you out.

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I wanted to make sure that she knew that I was that I was going to do everything possible to bring her bring her back. I went from daughter mode to a detective mode, I had to get out of that anguish and think differently. So as a detective, I'm, very persistent and I finally got her a relief flight. It was until probably, almost ten days later so I actually met her here in DCA to depress her.

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um The me knows are different. Her looks it's kind of hard to talk about it, but um but I was glad that she was here. I was glad to tell her. She was safe.