We are in the parking lot of the Red Cross chapter office in Greensboro, North Carolina (map), where we have been since our arrival Thursday night. The chapter has kindly provided us with a 15-amp power outlet, and we have a mostly shady spot adjacent to the train tracks. We are just down the street from the historic Cone textile mills, now being converted to offices, and just a couple of miles from downtown.
Hurricane Earl was mostly a non-event, and the relief operation here is already over. As is fairly common for us, we were the last ones out the door, sometime around 7 or so last night, after packing the last of the equipment. Everyone else was gone by 2pm. We would already be done and gone from here right now, if it were not for the fact that today is Labor Day, and FedEx is closed. We have a pile of equipment that needs to be returned to Austin, and we can't leave until we drop it off at FedEx. We also have to return a box truck to the rental agency.
With everyone else gone, the box truck is also our only transportation (we are not allowed to use our scooters or the bus when we are on an assignment), and we drove it to dinner last night at local favorite Natty Greene's downtown. The weather has been perfect since we arrived, and we've had several nice meals al fresco, including the previous evening at Liberty Oak, also downtown, with technology teammate Keith, and lunch at Ham's Lakeside yesterday with the job director and pretty much everyone still left -- six of us.
Had Earl actually turned out to be destructive, we would have moved the entire operation closer to the coast Friday afternoon, and so we had not really planned to be here at the chapter for more than a night. As it stands, we hope to be out of here early enough tomorrow to not be too disruptive to the chapter. We'll have a relaxing "day off" today for Labor Day, as is fitting, and wrap up tomorrow morning at the truck rental.
Louise is teaching an on-line class Tuesday evening. She has relatives in Raleigh, just an hour and a half east of here, and barring any further deployment from the Red Cross we will probably head that way Wednesday for some kind of visit. After that we are somewhat at loose ends, although we are carefully watching what remains of Gaston, heading past the Leeward Islands and threatening to redevelop into a tropical cyclone in the next day or two. I suspect from Raleigh we will be heading south to reposition for the next storm; tropical depressions are spitting out from their rookery off the coast of Africa with alarming frequency and regularity.
Photo by Majiscup - Drink for Design, used under a Creative Commons license.
Fascinating.
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly did you to for the Red Cross and the local people at this post? What would you have done if the storm had come on the land? Are you paid for this or simply reimbursed for certain expenses (as the truck)? Just curious.
ReplyDeleteErnie