9 days for Hurricane Wilma relief

I expected to stay longer but it turns out that I only had to stay 9 days in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. Our clients, CVS Pharmacy, Eckards, Home Depot and Bell South used us for that period of time and as of Monday afternoon they decided that they no longer needed us. As of Monday evening when we left to come home Bellsouth was the only client still needing us on their property. Mostly we watched the portable power generators to make sure no one walked off with them. CVS Pharmacy had several ice trucks that were giving out free ice that we had to monitor. Home Depot had a need for five officers during the day and two at night.
Home Depot was nice enough to obtain several gas trucks and allowed US Security vehicles and several vendors to bring their vehicles in to be refueled.
Ft Lauderdale has 30 counties that are still without power. Most of the businesses in Broward County where we were staying had power and you had a nice selection of restaurants to visit between 8 am and 10pm. There was still a curfew from 11pm to 6 am when we left in that county. We stayed at Inverrary Suites in Lauderhill Florida which is one of many municipalities withink Ft Lauderdale Florida.
My primary task turned out to be a driver since I was the only one with a laptop with GPS attachment. Even with the technology sometimes it was hard to find the right address since each street seems to be duplicated in every single town within Ft Lauderdale Fl. Towards the end of the week one of the operations managers, Jack, went out to Office Depot and bought Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 with GPS and he loved it. Jack used this to print out maps for the other drives so they could find their locations easier.
I took lots and lots of pictures that I will be uploading to my blog here and to my main photoalbum website. There was not as much apparent damage in Ft Lauderdale as there was in Mississippi and Louisiana however the residents in Ft Lauderdale and beyond did feel the effects of Hurricane Wilma. The water in several counties had to be boiled before consumption. Gas stations were all closed and the ones that were open were rationing gas and there were very long lines lasting for hours just to get 20.00 worth. Traffic in and around Ft lauderdale was a nightmare (daymare) because there were no traffic lights. Everyone's patience was almost non exisstant and I have not heard as many car horns in all my life. All left hand turns were blocked by police baracades which meant I had to take "Mother Goose" on a million U Turns which was so much fun. Mother Goose is the name for the 15 passenger Chevy Van that I wound up driving on many trips. Ice, dairy products and lunch meat or meat of any kind were not available since all the grocery stores lost everything when the electricity went out. CVS Pharmacy was nice enough to truck in several trucks of ice bags that were given out to anyone that wanted to come and pick it up.
One of the things that I have learned about these types of trips is that there is a lot of negativity and living conditions are less than optimal. As someone said these types of situations (natural disasters) will bring out the best of the best and the worse of the worse. Due to the living conditions being less than optimal and having to work long hours with very little food or breaks that led to folks being less than patient and perhaps more verbal about their complaints that they might have been normally. I kept finding myself wishing that the folks would just suck it up and quit the whining. LOL...
Having to deliver 40+ security officers to multiple sites in a strange city with no power turned into a logistical nightmare to say the least. For some reason the law enforcement officials in Ft Lauderdale were NOT receptive to our arrival and/or attempts of assistance to our clients. On more han one occasion we had the city police and county police to harrass our security personell who were on site at night doing their jobs. That did not make our jobs any easier.
One of the things that added to the confusion logistically speaking is that our company had way too many chiefs and not enough indians. Lack of communications and the inability to provide the security officers with much needed perdiem money caused a huge moral problem within the ranks.