An alert Cotton, best friend of Dan Townshend's family, listens carefully to his master while (from left to right) Jeff Newsome, Danny Robinson, Ed Gotthard, and Jim Hughes chow down.
| Hurricane Isabel, September 2003 |
Related coverage from the Rappahannock Record
| A category 2 hurricane struck the mid-Atlantic region of the United States on September 18, 2003. Damage was widespread from Cape Hattaras, North Carolina to West Virginia. |
| Northumberland County, where the Mid-County Volunteer Rescue Squad is located, experienced flooding, property damage, and extended power outages as a result of the storm. We had no fatalities, however, and relatively few injuries. |
| Mid-County maintained 24-hour crews at the station from the evening of Wednesday, September 17 through Wednesday, September 24. The station's standby generator energized our entire building from the time power went out on Thursday afternoon until power was restored to Heathsville on the following Monday. Having power let us accommodate not only our squad members and duty crews, but also members of the public. |
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An alert Cotton, best friend of Dan Townshend's family, listens carefully to his master while (from left to right) Jeff Newsome, Danny Robinson, Ed Gotthard, and Jim Hughes chow down. |
Rebekah Haynie and Garfield Parker come on duty, greeted by Cotton. Ed and Jim look on. |
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Power was out for most of the county for 4 days after the storm, but, because Mid-County can generate its own power, citizens were still able to take their breathing treatments. |
| We took our first call of the storm (mutual aid for Northumberland County Rescue Squad) at 4:00 a.m. Friday morning. |
| We responded with two units. Ed Gotthardt's personal 4WD pickup, crewed by Ed, Danny Robinson, and Dan Townshend and equipped with chainsaws, preceeded Unit 46 and cleared the road ahead. The ambulance followed, crewed at various times by Devin Basye, Rebekah Byrd, Jim Hughes, and Garfield Parker. The first trip to the hospital took only about 20 minutes longer than normal, in spite of at least 5 stops to clear the road and a cross-county detour over a clear road between SR 200 and SR 3. |
| The Mid-County Lumberjacks cleared an emergency vehicle-sided path through downed trees from Heathsville to Kilmarnock. |
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Samples of conditions they faced on U.S. 360 on the way to the call... |
...and SR 201 coming back from Kilmarnock. This particular tree blocked the entire road at the beginning... |
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...but looked less formidable after Mid-County got through with it. |
Mid-County hacked a path for the ambulance through this mess on SR 200 on the way to Kilmarnock. By Friday afternoon, Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) workers had finished the job and cleared both lanes. |
Our tree crew kept at it until late afternoon on Friday; VDOT couldn't finish all the work Mid-County started. |
The crab house at Glebe Point was still flooded at 1600 on Friday.
Similar flooding, and far greater property damage occurred in the villages of Judith Sound and Lewisetta, on the Potomac River's Virginia Shore. Mid-County members helped deliver fresh water to residents cleaning up their devastated homes. |
| Many, many thanks to Devin Basye, Rebekah Byrd, Ed Gotthardt, Jim Hughes, Garfield Parker, Danny Robinson, and Dan Townshend for their hard work and the risks they took out in the wind on Friday and rumaging through storm debris on Saturday and Sunday. Northumberland County has no more dedicated and dependable volunteers than these Mid-County members. |
