Fifty Out of the Water in One Day

People want the hero version of that day. I do not have one.

What I have is the logistics version, and the logistics version is more useful to you anyway.

During Hurricane Florence we pulled fifty people out of the water in a single day. That is the number I carry. It is not a brag. By the end of it I could not have told you fifty faces if you paid me.

Here is how a day like that actually runs.

It does not start on the water

It starts three days earlier, on a screen.

You track the system. You read the cone. You are not looking at where the wind is worst. You are looking for low ground where people do not have the resources to leave. Elevation, older housing, one road in and out, folks who cannot just put four hundred dollars of gas and a hotel on a card.

That is where the calls come from. Every time.

Then you get there before the water does. You stage on the low ground near where the eyewall is coming. Not because you are brave. Because after it hits, the roads you were counting on are gone, and a boat two hours away is a boat that does not exist.

Then the plan dies

Every plan I ever wrote for a storm died in the first hour.

Somebody's motor swallows debris. The road you mapped is underwater deeper than the truck. Radios go stupid. The address you were given does not exist and the one that does is four streets over. A team splits because two calls came in at once and now you have half a team in two places.

That is not failure. That is Tuesday.

The mistake people make is treating the dead plan as the emergency. The plan dying is expected. The emergency is the water.

The three rules

Everything I know about staying useful in chaos comes down to three rules. I have used them on water and I have used them on days when the only thing flooding was my own life.

Rule one. Do the next right thing, not the best thing.

There is no best thing. Best requires information you do not have and time you will never get. The next right thing is the thing in front of you that you can actually finish. Finish it. Then look up.

Rule two. One voice on the radio.

The second everybody is talking, nobody is. Somebody has to be the single point that calls it, even if that person is wrong sometimes. A crew moving on one imperfect call beats a crew debating the perfect one.

Rule three. Fuel, water, and eyes on your own people.

The fastest way to lose a day is to burn your crew down and not notice. Nobody raises their hand. You have to go look. Are they eating. Are they drinking. Has anybody sat down. A tired man makes the decision that hurts somebody.

The triage you can use on a bad Tuesday

You are probably not pulling anybody out of a flood this week. You are still going to have a day where four things go wrong at once and you freeze in your own kitchen.

Same method. Ninety seconds, out loud if you have to.

1. What is actually life or death? Almost nothing is. Say it out loud. "Nobody is going to die today." Most of what feels like drowning is a deadline, a bill, or a conversation. Naming that gets your hands to stop shaking.

2. What is the one thing that unlocks the most? Not the loudest. Not the one somebody is yelling about. The one that, once handled, makes three others smaller. Usually it is a phone call you have been avoiding.

3. What can I actually finish in the next hour? Do that. All the way to done. Do not start four things.

4. Who needs to know? One message, plain, no story. "Here is what happened, here is what I am doing, here is when I will update you." Half of the panic in a bad day is other people not knowing.

5. What am I doing about fuel? Eat something. Drink water. Sit down for five minutes. You will make worse calls at hour eight than you did at hour two and you will not feel it happening.

That is it. That is the whole method that got fifty people into boats.

The part I do not tell often

I did not feel like a hero at the end. I felt hollowed out.

You do not process fifty of anything in one day. You process it later, in pieces, at weird times, for years. That is not weakness and it is not damage. It is the receipt for having been there.

If you have had a day like that, in whatever form yours took, you already know what I mean.

Your version of a fifty boat day is coming, and it will not look like water. When it does, what is the one thing in your life that unlocks the most?