A giant at the door, By LISA KACZKE, Staff Writer

VNP staff recount experiences in hurricane, on reservation

As Hurricane Ike bore down on Houston, six Voyageurs National Park staff waited for it to pass so they could begin their jobs.
VNP rangers Jay Brown and Nate Hawley, fire fighters Kurt Fogelberg and Owen Johnson and maintenance employees Seth Nelson and Chad Nevalainen were among 57 National Park Service staff who responded to a request for park staff knowledgeable in boat operation to assist in the recovery following the hurricane. The Category 2 hurricane struck the coast of Texas Sept. 12.
And as they returned to Borderland, another park staff member left for Houston to oversee contractors completing emergency roof repairs that will allow Houston residents to return to work and home.
Meanwhile, Ranger Brad Farlinger returned from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on the North and South Dakota border, where he was part of a surge of law enforcement that began in June by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to help lower the crime rate. A second VNP ranger has also been requested at the reservation, where he will work for the next several weeks.
VNP Chief Ranger Jim Hummel called the events of September a “dynamic time” with the various requests for help from federal agencies. The need for federal staff is “overwhelming, but exciting” for VNP. Hummel said in his many years with the park service, he has never seen as many demands for “critical help” as in this past month.

Houston
The work the six VNP staff were expecting to be doing — boating down streets and rescuing people from roofs — wasn’t what they ended up doing because Hurricane Ike was less destructive than anticipated.
Park staff left the Falls Sept. 8, driving 30 hours to Fort Worth, Texas, before continuing on to Houston, where they arrived on Sept. 11.
In Fort Worth, they picked up boats that had been pre-positioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and brought them to Houston.
For the duration of the hurricane, four VNP staff, including Brown, stayed with other emergency workers in the Reliant Center in Houston. Brown described his first experience in a hurricane as “a bit creepy.” The building had large roll-up doors and the hurricane sounded like “a giant was pounding on the door,” he said, adding that he thought the roof would be yanked off by the wind.
Fogelberg rode out the hurricane in a bathroom on the seventh floor of a Holiday Inn hotel that had been deemed structurally sound by a FEMA engineer. Rain was coming in around the windows and the air conditioning unit, he said. The wind forced the curtains to stand out from the windows horizontally, even though the windows were closed.
After Hurricane Ike passed, NPS staff left in three groups to Galveston, Port Arthur and Beaumont.
Brown was attached to a FEMA search and rescue task force that specialized in urban rescue. The unit’s primary goal was to conduct “hasty search and rescue,” which is an initial search for those needing assistance and setting up a triage in the area, Brown said.
Once the search and rescues were complete and the water had receded, Brown’s team began conducting door-to-door welfare checks, reporting residents that needed help and looking for pets that had been left behind. Despite the large number of downed trees, Brown said he observed only a few houses that were completely demolished and some that had damage but the structure was still intact.
Fogelberg conducted door-to-door checks in Beaumont, east of Houston. There weren’t blocks of destroyed houses, he said, but only miles of downed power lines. His team also traveled along a river inland, checking on houseboats.
Brown and Fogelberg said there were many instances of “hurry up and wait” as a result of the destruction being less than was anticipated. But overall, they said the park service’s operation went well.
Following several weeks in Texas, the staff dropped the boats off in Marshall, Texas, where they will be stored until they are needed in the next hurricane.
After his first hurricane, Fogelberg said he is appreciative of the Minnesota weather.
“We think we’ve got it rough, but it’s good compared to there,” Fogelberg said.

Standing Rock
Farlinger is a member of a NPS special events team requested by the BIA to assist in reducing crime on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
The increase in law officers was needed because crime was out of control and residents no longer felt safe, Farlinger said. Crime on the reservation is four times the national average, which led tribal officers to resign, according to Hummel.
With the large size of the reservation — more than 3,500 square miles — officers could be responding to one call while receiving another call on the other side of the reservation 60 miles away, Farlinger said. A special command center was set up for the extra officers that allowed them to respond to calls faster, he said. The additional law enforcement also allowed more than one officer to respond to a call for service, he said.
The team also conducted public outreach by speaking at schools and taking part in community policing, Farlinger said.
The community was happy they were there, he said. Children would swarm the officer’s vehicles when they would go out in the community, where they were nicknamed the “green stripes” because of the stripe on the NPS vehicles, he said.
Farlinger said the extra officers became a part of the community. Members of the ambulance service made dinners for them and the mayor’s wife brought food to them, he said.
Results of the surge appear positive, he said. The first month of the surge resulted in 700 arrests, and has decreased to below 300 in September.
“People are no longer afraid to go outside,” Farlinger said.
The experience was far different than Farlinger’s service as a park ranger. As a park ranger, he can see that he is “doing good” for a person when he administers medical assistance or conducts a successful search and rescue. He said he had dealt with domestic and disorderly conduct incidents while a ranger at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada, but typically a ranger doesn’t go into residents’ homes.
The laws were also different on the reservation, requiring the officers to quickly learn the laws from a field book and be sworn in by a federal judge before beginning work on the reservation, Farlinger said.
“The laws that you know don’t apply,” he said.
The weeks at Standing Rock were a good way to refresh his skills as a law enforcement officer and also an opportunity to work with “top notch” BIA officers, he said.