Sure. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning. This is my forty first year in in law enforcement. Started my career down in Orlando, Florida where, held a number of different positions there, but most of my career was, focused on the tactical side of things, the the SWAT side, the emergency response, down in down in Orlando for about fifteen years there. I was an operator on the team there. Eventually became an assistant sector commander there as a lieutenant. My wife and I decided that we wanted to raise our kids here in North Carolina. And and, January 1999, I became a chief of police in Waynesville, North Carolina. Had the good fortune of being there for just under twenty one years as the as the police chief. Found myself in a number of different scenarios, where we've had a number, believe it or not, in the mountains. I thought leaving Florida, I'd leave hurricanes behind, but, we've had a number of those experiences here. We had some, historical flooding all the way back to 2004, several floods there. So it was involved there. And, of course, wildfires, things like that are always, an issue here in the mountains. So, involved with the planning and the and the response to those critical scenarios for for quite a while now. When I did retire in June 2019 as a police chief, I was offered the role of the executive director for the Police Chiefs Association. The Police Chiefs Association has been around for fifty years now, and it provides a resource for agencies across the state. As you're aware, in North Carolina, we've got police departments that range in size from three or four officers all the way up to 2,000 officers. And we try to be a resource for, all of those agencies across the state no matter what their needs might be, no matter how big or small they are. We help to coordinate, response between those agencies across the state. We're we're involved with training. Like, we just had a a couple trainers, one in Charlotte the week before last, one in Raleigh last week, where we bring in chiefs and command staff members and keep them apprised on, best practices and different things that are happening, not only in our state, but across the country. We're involved with agency assessments, where we can help agencies, develop their their policies and their protocols to, again, meet best practices with the eventual goal of of getting that agency accredited. And then probably one of the largest things that we do is, we're very active in legislation. We can either go advocate for a certain piece of legislation or oppose a piece of legislation that we feel would be best for the profession moving forward. So I feel very fortunate to be involved in the organization. Again, I've been a law enforcement officer a long, long time. And even though I'm not an active chief anymore, it provides me an opportunity to, to work with agencies across the state and and still try to provide a a a positive focus and moving the profession ahead.

Yeah. And I'm gonna quote one of the great orders of our time, Mike Tyson. Everybody thinks they have a plan until you're hit in the mouth. And then all of a sudden, your plan may, not go forward as you had envisioned. But, you know, what we found, and and again, where where I was the chief in in Waynesville, Haywood County had experienced that was the fourth five hundred year flood in twenty years that we had experienced. So we thought that we were prepared, and every agency, I think, whether you're on the coast or in the mountains, think that they're prepared for, what may come down the pike. How we've done this before, we've we've been there, done that, so to speak. But this this past storm, Helene, brought such different obstacles, such bigger challenges than we've ever faced before that if we if you weren't prepared as a police department, a fire department, a city in general, or a county in general, you you didn't have a whole lot of, of hope to earn Hilleen. It was just it left everybody stunned. And those agencies that did have a good COOP, a contingency of operation plan, it it just it it provides essential, a a plan to provide those essential and key functions for your organization. We've had floods in the past, but we still kept our communications. Helene took down all of our communications. That was a huge impediment. A huge that was really a a very dangerous thing where we're sending crews out for for body recoveries or searches or whatever. We had zero communication with them. People that generally would need 911 for medical calls. There was zero communication there. So we're out doing random patrols, hoping somebody would wave us down if they needed help. It just provided a whole different level of response that we had not maybe planned for. So what we did is come back and look at our COOPs, our contingency of operations plans, and say, okay. You know, we can't plan for just what we experienced in the past. We've got to look and say, worst case scenario, we've got to have a contingency of operation plan that identifies things that we may not have thought of before, like lack of communications, lack of running water, clean water, lack of fuel. It was a long time. You think, well, we've got generators, but if you don't have fuel for those generators, how are you gonna sustain your operations? So it kinda taught us that, not only plan for what we had seen before, but we've got a plan for things that, you know, we've never experienced before. And, again, your continuency of operation plan, you've got to plan for the absolute worst and pray for the best.

We depend on each other. There's not an agency in the state of North Carolina that given a critical incident or a disaster like happened during the lean, is totally self sufficient. We've got to rely on each other. So part of your Continuance of Operations plans have got to include resources outside your agency or your city as well. A lot of operations plans, okay, we're gonna do this and it's all internal. But we've got to look for to have in your plan, to work with resources outside your immediate area. And that doesn't mean the city next door. Because again, back in o four when we experienced floods and even three years ago here in Haywood County, it was very isolated to our county. So we could reach out to Asheville, we could reach out to Boone, we could reach out to Cherokee and bring resources in. But during this particular event, it affected 21 counties. So we're looking at resources from, you know, Charlotte, the Piedmont, the Coast, everybody coming in. So your your plans really got to have got to look at resources just outside your individual city, your individual county. You've got to look at that again, that worst case scenario where you plan to bring in resources from everywhere in the state. And and again, in the in Hilleen, we had people coming in from, you know, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida here to help us as well. So, just don't think of your plan as being, self centered or just isolated to your particular jurisdiction.

You've got to be. And and a COOP, that's a great point. A contingency of operations plan is not a one size fits all thing. We have a, a draft coup on our website, on our Police Chiefs Association, website that you can kinda look at, but you have got to tailor that plan to meet your agency or your city. Again, a contingency of operations plan for Marshall, where they may have five or six officers is gonna be totally different than a Charlotte contingency of operations plan just based on the amount of staffing, the amount of resources that you have to to respond to a critical incident. So it's just a starting place when you look at that, that that draft COOP that we may have on the website. I think the League of Municipality is talking with, your risk management team there. You've got some ideas as well at the League, and you've got to take that draft and you've got to tailor it to your agency based on the resources you have. And, again, when you look at the scenario like a a marshal where they lost everything, okay, what do we do now and who do we rely on? Because it's not gonna be the city next door or even the county next door. It's gonna be Raleigh and Charlotte and Wilmington and and all places in between. So you've got to look at, your content your your coop based on the resources you have, the staffing you have, what's around you as far as agencies, cities, that kind of thing, and then beyond. What can we do to tie into the Chiefs Association? What can we do to tie in with the Sheriffs Association, the League of Municipalities to bring those resources in that we will not have locally?

Sure. Just on a personal scenario, you know, I I woke up at 7AM that morning, and I I live obviously in the in the West, in Waynesville still. And, we still had power. We had water coming in my basement, so I knew we had a problem. I looked out, the front of my house and the water was coming out of a creek that runs in the front of my house. It became Snake River Canyon. It was huge. It was taking out the road, the bridges, culverts for, you know, me, my neighbors. So we knew that we had a problem of being isolated. So mobility is a big problem or became a big problem for everybody because you had pockets of people that were isolated because of the water. They just couldn't go anywhere. We they couldn't get out and we couldn't get in. So mobility and isolation was the first thing that hit me was we've got the plan. How do we get out of here? Or if we need somebody to come in, how do we bring them in here? At the time, I still had power and we still had communications. About twenty minutes later, the power went out and all of our, communications were lost. Landline telephones, cell phones, radios, we had zero communication and zero power. It was a little bit unnerving for me because the Chiefs Association helps with mutual aid for police departments across our state, and we coordinate with emergency management in Raleigh. And that was one of my functions as the director of the Chiefs Association. So as I started getting those mutual aid requests, I realized that I had when I was receiving them as I was bailing water out of my basement, okay, I will get that to them. Well, then I lose power in all communications. So, you know, the the the biggest thing there was then no communications. So we've lost our mobility. We can't get in or out. Now we've lost our ability to communicate. It was a bad feeling. So, once the rain stopped, we were able to kind of, you know, walk through the woods, do different things, try to find ways out. Again, the water was still very, very high, running very, very fast, and I realized I couldn't I couldn't get in or out, to help those agencies. But our board of directors, stepped up and said, we know where he lives. We can't find him. We can't get a hold of him. My all of my emails were then forwarded to Raleigh to the communication center, the emergency management, e o EOC there. And we had five dedicated chiefs twenty four seven for weeks to then to, dictate where those resources and that mutual aid was going to go from there. And then you look at resources. Okay. We don't have mobility. We don't have communications. Then we didn't have resources just just to continue the daily operations like fuel. Fuel ran out very, very quickly. And so where your agency says, well, I've got generators. Generators, if they're not on natural gas, they took fuel to operate. And it was days before we could start getting shipments of fuel in. So what does your city, what does your agency do to maintain a reserve for fuel? Whether those are diesel or gas generators to run, maybe they're propane, but have a a backup in your continuance of operations to make sure, okay, I've got a backup generator, but then do I have backup reserve fuel to run that generator? So you gotta look at your resources and then staffing became a huge issue. A lot of our officers weren't able to get to work. Where am I gonna find staffing to just maintain, minimal operations for my agency? So if I can't maintain them internally, where do I go to bring in staffing? And that, again, is where the Police Chiefs Association, the League of Municipalities, agencies like that, organizations like that can help you as an agency or city to maintain those operations.

Well, I think the biggest thing was, again, we've dealt with past disasters. We dealt with past floods. We've dealt with, past wildfires. We've dealt with critical incidents. We've dealt with active shooters. We've we've we thought we've developed plans to, to counter all those or mitigate a lot of those risks that we would, face. But, again, this storm, when you can't communicate, I think the lack of communication was the biggest issue for agencies, for public safety agencies. If we can't talk, if we can't communicate with the public, if we can't communicate with each other, we had real issues there. That was probably the the most critical thing that we saw was the lack of communication. So I think now that forced us to think out of the box and say, what can we do to counter that again? If we lose all of our towers, if we lose all of our power to run those towers, the backup generators are under mud, the road to get to those towers to maintain them and repair them are gone. How do we continue? As you know, we we relied on satellite communication. Starlink, we had 38,000 Starlink systems, dropped into Western North Carolina. So now we're thinking of, okay, if this happens again, what have we done to prepare if we lose communication again? I was talking to the director of the State Bureau of Investigation. He has now put, STARLINK systems in all of his offices across the state of North Carolina. The Chiefs Association has working with, Department of Public Safety, we're putting in for grants for communications trailers where we can take as an association a communications trailer to any place in North Carolina and immediately set up satellite communications. There's three distinct satellite different methods of satellite communications on each of these trailers, but we can come to a city, hook into their communications center, and then run off satellite if we would lose those communications towers in the future. I know that individual police departments and cities are now investing in satellite systems just to have them in case. And I think that's thinking out of the box that we've never had to do before because we've never lost communications on such a wide scale as we did even when Asheville got some communications. Because, you know, the major communication centers went to the major population center, which was, practical and reasonable, and got some form of communications. A few, cell phones would would be operational there after several days. Some of our other counties didn't get communications for for, you know, eight, nine days. So it was critical that we think about how we're going to communicate in the future. And again, who would have thought that we need to invest in satellite communications in Waynesville, North Carolina or Marshall or, you know, Hot Springs or Asheville. But now lesson learned from Helene, I think you're gonna see agencies and organizations across the state invest in satellite communications as a backup.

most of that centers around the the communication. We're with, in in Raleigh yesterday and the day before, and I know that the state is looking to expand our Viper system, which is kind of the emergency communications, system by, you know, building, many, many more towers across the state. But, again, I think the critical part of that is maintaining, power and backup power and all to those to those towers. I know that they're working on the VIPER system, and expanding it to try to meet some of those communications needs. Again, we are looking at satellite communications. I think in in the ways of technology, when you don't have communications, when you don't have power, nothing else is gonna work. You can have all the fancy software in the world, and if you don't if your computer won't come on, due to no power, you know, so make sure you have, you know, backup power and then, again, backup fuel to to to run that backup power. So you'll have computer systems and your softwares, your CADs, your computer dispatch systems, that kind of thing is all that was down for an extended period of time in most places in Western North Carolina. And then just the ability to talk to each other whether that's radio communications, cell phone, be thinking outside the box and and bring in a backup satellite system. I think, you know, they're it's like $500 a system and when you need it, in the case of an emergency, it's generally the fees are waived, you plug in for free, even not, you know, a $120 a month and you're operational. So, you know, make sure you have communications as far as on your technology end because without the ability to talk, to check on your people, for your people to know where to go to, where to respond, making sure they're safe. The other technology that we used was drone technology. When we didn't have communications with some of the teams that we sent out, and you weren't able to communicate with them, we saw fire trucks with, satellite, Starlink systems hanging out the window of a fire truck, but you couldn't put a satellite system in every patrol car. So when we sent teams out, we would actually send a drone to monitor that team. So again, the drone can be, self contained, where you don't need outside power, outside communication systems. All we were using that drone for was to keep an eye on those teams that we were sending out. We were using drone technology and body recovery. You know, going down the river banks and all, or even in dangerous places where you didn't wanna send, a team or a squad of officers, you'd we we could send a drone in. So drone technology, proved to be very, very beneficial during Helene.

I think law enforcement across our state, in fact, January our January comp training conference for the Police Chiefs Association, we did an entire panel on lessons learned from Helene. So we did that. We changed our agenda completely. We hadn't planned on that initially, but we felt like this was something that we needed to discuss right now. As far as what can we learn from the agencies in the West, it doesn't matter if you're in Brunswick County or Dare County, what happened in, Buncombe and Haywood County can very easily happen over there, obviously. And you would think in in the case of a hurricane, it would be more likely to happen over on the coast. But again, I think a lot of those counties, a lot of those cities have been through hurricanes in the past and say, well, you know, we we get some water and we get a little bit of wind and the power goes out for a while and we've experienced some flooding. But look at your worst case scenario. And I think Helene was probably the worst case scenario. I can't think of anything else that could go wrong, that that did go wrong. So I think we've got to learn from, what we experienced in Helene and whether you're a police chief, a fire chief, a city manager, county manager, whatever that is, work with the resources that are available. Make sure your chief is a part of the Chiefs Association. You know, make sure you're involved with the league. Make sure that you have a relationship with emergency management. Our relationship with emergency management, really jelled during Helene because it had to. Again, when the Chiefs Association sent five chiefs twenty four seven for weeks at a time, we worked hand in hand with emergency management to ensure that, every city that responded with a request or that requested staffing or equipment or whatever it was, that we were able to meet those those requests. So I'd say, you know, police chiefs, city managers, when you're preparing for the twenty twenty five hurricane season and beyond, when you're preparing for a wildfire, the Western North Carolina is still dealing with with wildfires right now. So whatever the critical incident is, it could be, you know, Florida State University had an active shooter on campus. Their plan, I'm I'm reading a lot of articles and listening to a lot where their plan really came in. It it it it really enabled them to respond the way that they they needed to respond. Make sure that you as a police chief and you as a city manager are not that you not only have a plan, but your command staff, your supervisors, your officers know that plan. It's great to have something on paper and it's in the computer, but if your staff doesn't know what that plan is and where those resources are, okay, here is the reserve fuel. We may have to use a hand crank to bring that fuel back to the police department and make sure those generators stay running. Make sure they know what's in that plan. And if you have the opportunity, train. Not only train internally with your own people, but do a regional training with other agencies. Can't tell you how how important that is because, again, there's not a city or an organization in North Carolina that's big enough to be totally self sufficient. You know, I know Charlotte Mecklenburg's a big department and they they respond when we need them. We've gone to them in the past, but when they have big events, they rely on other people as well. So it doesn't matter how big or small your organization is, train internally, but then also train with those external resources and make sure you can work together. And you know when that when that disaster does strike, you know exactly what to do and how to respond.