Tuesday was when the rain that never stopped began.
But don’t ask Orange police captains Robert Enmon or Keith Longlois about Tuesday night, or Wednesday, or Thursday. The hours and days blurred so much they can’t remember when. They’ll never forget the why.
Tropical Storm Harvey.
It’s another name to the list of names they recite. Allison, Rita, Humberto, Ike, and more. The two captains have coordinated emergency efforts for the Orange Police Department for disasters.
It’s a partnership that began 28 years ago in a doctor’s office. Both were there to get physicals to go to the police academy. They went to the academy together and have spent their careers with OPD.
“We can complete each other’s sentences,” Enmon said and grinned.
“My wife says he’s my ‘work wife,'” Longlois said.
OPD has four shifts that rotate. Longlois is currently a shift captain and Enmon supervises the detectives.
Longlois, on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 29, 2017, went to West Orange-Stark Elementary School in Pinehurst. Pinehurst City Manager Robbie Hood arranged for the school to be opened as a place where people could go to escape the flooding. Longlois was the only person in authority and the only one to provide security.
He found no food and water. “We didn’t even have toilet paper,” he said. The Pinehurst Volunteer Fire Department opened the school and helped find toilet paper.
People started coming to the school. Soon there were dozens. “We had the elderly. We had people with health problems, with mental problems, with dementia,” he said.
Some were dropped off by a neighbor or relative saying something like “Here’s Aunt So-and-So, you take care of her.”
Longlois asked if anyone had secretarial skills. He was able to get a volunteer to register people coming into the school. Pets came, too, and relieved themselves in the halls. So he got a mop and bleach and cleaned. When people asked, he replied “We’ve got a lot of people here. I don’t want to get dysentary.” He got more volunteers. They cleaned.
The City of Orange had someone go to a grocery store for food for 300. “Our first meal was literally peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” he said.
The captain said he worried about the health of some of the evacuees. He requested five body bags, in case. That got the attention of people at emergency command centers.
“Late into the night, a team of doctors and nurses arrived,” he said. “I don’t know where they came from, but I was glad.”
Enmon spent that night at the Hampton Inn. Not by choice. He had evacuated his wife from their house north of Interstate 10. She had asked to get out after she saw neighbors leaving that afternoon in boats.
“You can’t go out and help people unless you know your family is safe,” he said.
His advice to new officers at the beginning of every hurricane season is to get a credit card used only for emergencies. Put the card and cash in an envelope for their families to use to reach a safe place. And he adds for each officer to buy a pack of underwear and a pack of socks to keep in their locker. They might need them.
By Wednesday morning, Enmon couldn’t travel from the hotel. Detectives in a high-water truck picked him up.
Near the hotel he saw two strangers he calls “the unsung heroes.” A couple of Louisiana State Police troopers with their patrol car were on the Interstate 10 overpass. Already, local citizens were gathering at the overpass as they waded out of their flooded homes.
Enmon never learned the troopers’ names. “We heard you needed help,” one told him. They said they had buses on the way to take people to the Lake Charles Civic Center. But they needed a pickup site.
Northway Shopping Center was still dry. Enmon told the troopers to get the buses to the shopping center. “Northway ended up the place of a lot activity. Police used it as a staging place,” he said.
Orange was an ocean of water. Streets were hidden. “We’re still trying to figure out how to get about,” Enmon said.
Several Orange officers never made it to town. They live in places like Lumberton or North Vidor and could not travel.
The captains said Officer Patrick McDonald was stuck at his house in Mauriceville. His house stayed dry and he helped his neighbors. Then he used his cell phone to direct Coast Guard helicopter drops bringing emergency supplies like medicines, including insulin.
And like any good Texan during a disaster, McDonald “fired up the barbecue” for the 40 people at his house.
Officers around Orange were doing all they could to help. Chief Lane Martin was seen in chest-deep water pulling a boat with people rescued from their flooded houses in Oak Creek Village.
Longlois said he had talked to Sheriff’s Captain Cliff Hargrave at the county’s emergency command center. Hargrave started at OPD at the same time as Enmon and Longlois though he had retired, and then gone to work for the county. Hargrave sent buses to the elementary school to get the evacuees out.
Finally, Enmon and Longlois were both at the police station, which was dry, though the streets were flooded. Enmon recalls Marines were the first rescuers to arrive at the station. They had high-water rescue trucks and asked where to go.
He pointed southward to the Cove neighborhood. He knew from experience people there would be flooded.
As more help arrived, a house-to-house search was made through East Orange.
Police knew bodies of the deceased were in the waters. A man drowned in a pickup truck on Park Avenue at the Adams Bayou Bridge. Two young men, one still a teenager, were electrocuted when they stepped in flood waters to turn off the electrical breaker to their house. Some of the deceased were in their homes. They already had medical problems and had died. Longlois said one had not been able to get to needed dialysis.
But in an emergency, the living come first. As Wednesday progressed, volunteers, like the Cajun Navy, with boats arrived and went into neighborhoods. Military helicopters were dropping baskets to lift women, children and the elderly out of the waters.
Enmon said North Orange Baptist Church has always opened its doors to during disasters. The church was letting people stay, but at one point, the officers feared the water rising in the back was going to flood the church. The evacuees were taken to another spot.
Longlois said he thought of keeping a journal during Harvey, but there was no time. Not only must people be helped, but records must be kept. FEMA will reimburse the city (and taxpayers) for the extra expenses like overtime, food, and equipment for the first responders. Records are needed to get the money back.
Dispatchers worked at the police department for 36 hours straight, the captains said. Relief dispatchers were stuck in the flood waters.
The Danny Gray Community Room at the station turned into a dorm room full of cots for officers who needed sleep before going back out. Everyone knew to be quiet in the hall.
The emergency workers, including the dispatchers, all have a “moment” during the hours after a disaster. It’s where they have to go away by themselves and cry or release other emotions that build.
Enmon himself went to the Ridgemont subdivision to recover the bodies of the two young men.
Longlois can’t remember the specific day of the week, but it was the day he could drive all the way down 16th Street from Park Avenue to Interstate 10. The street was lined with trucks and boats.
“That was the day I realized we had gone from rescue to recovery,” he said.
Longlois’ house did not flood, though it had major damage during Hurricane Rita. Enmon’s house, which had never flooded before, was a total loss. The house on piers had water “percolating” inside for three days. The wooden floors buckled so much the walls collapsed. The site was bulldozed.
The Enmons have a new house built, but are still dealing with a contractor to finish it right before they move in. He had planned to retire in a couple of years with a paid-for house. Now, he’ll have house payments.
Every disaster also teaches first responders. The captains said Chief Martin has bought a couple of high-water trucks for the department. They are available when needed. “We’re not going to rely on the kindness of strangers,” Enmon said.
“I hope we never need them,” Longlois said. “I hope they rot in the parking lot.”
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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