| The Gadsden Times
The City of Gadsden is responding to needs on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, sending personnel and equipment to help with storm recovery, Gadsden Fire Chief Stephen Carroll said.
A group of 16 people, including firefighters and public works employees, headed out Monday morning, with plans to devote a few days of work in the area hit hard by Hurricane Sally. Carroll said they will return to Gadsden Thursday or Friday.
Three members of the Gadsden-Etowah County Emergency Management staff went to the gulf last week: director Deborah Gaither, Breonna Cole and Kip Williams Sr. responded to the state EMA call for help in coordinating storm response. Gaither and Cole remain in the area to assist.
“We want to thank Mayor (Sherman) Guyton and the City Council for allowing us to go,” Carroll said.
All the employees going to Baldwin County are volunteers, he said, and will be paid by the city for regular hours while they work on storm clean-up.
“We won’t be able to do everything,” Carroll said, referring to the vast scope of work that is needed. “We’ll be limited to work that is within our training, and that we have equipment to do.”
He said he expected that to include a lot of debris clean-up.
Carroll said a primary reason for the trip is to help firefighters and first responders who live in the area — people who have been devoting their time to public response to the storm while they personally have work that needs to be done at their own homes.
In briefing members of the team that left Monday, Carroll told them to be cautious — that safety was the No. 1 priority.
During the COVID0-19 pandemic, staying safe involves even more than it has in past trips of this kind. Carroll told team members to remember social distancing as much as possible.
“We don’t want to bring anything home to our families that we didn’t take down there,” he said.
Hurricane Sally made landfall in the Gulf Shores area Sept. 16 as a Category 2 storm, resulting in widespread flooding and wind damage in Pensacola, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and surrounding communities.
Gadsden police officer Ron Leek, vice president of the Alabama Fraternal Order of Police, said he and President Everette Johnson and representatives from many FOP chapters — including national FOP President Patrick Yoes — went to the gulf and worked on fellow police officers’ and others’ homes and property the week after the storm hit.
Private citizens got in on the relief effort, too. Donna Kelley and Artie Morgan worked with a group at Rainbow Community Church Monday morning, preparing personal hygiene and clean up baskets they planned to take south.
Kelley said they would be supplying people in the Ardmore area, then Orange Beach, as a project of the Alabama Daughters of the Confederacy.
Kelley is president of Etowah County chapter 1620. Members donated material for the baskets.
