So, my Jeeps were gotten with a purpose. The Pewter colored WJ was first, and it was converted to be fit to perform what would be required. The white one was bought for the same purpose. I have had some requests here to share a piece of the experience on this site. I have some of it in the past.

Stand-down orders happened, and I did not go to Arkansas as was planned the week prior. Hurricane Dorian came to our East Coast instead this week. Stand-by orders supersedes any other concerns in the organization. Task Orders for deployment are underway.

Maybe next week or next month you don't care, ever cared, or no longer really remember? I will though. There is an Emergency. A place where they need help. The Islands off the coast of NC are in trouble, as is many other areas nearby on the East Coast of the United States inland. I do not want to mention the other Islands... What is going on over there right now does not have an appropriate descriptor for it available in any languages I know of. There is a different long-term effort going to be taking place there in a little while it'll all be underway.

It is time to double-down. It is time to get to work. These Jeeps have a duty to perform. I am only asking the WJ to do limited work this run. It is well maintained, but the hardware components.. they will fail if I abuse them much any further before I fix them. I don't have the tools or the time for all of that right now. I am delegating the WJ for transportation duties carrying supplies, myself, and the ZJ there, and for doing the same running us from zone to zone if needed.. back and forth. The ZJ gets daily field duty operations, with the WJ as its back-up.

Recovery Operations commence three hours before sunrise on Monday, at a still yet undisclosed location somewhere in the Carolinas. We are using Sunday for our travel day.

Everything that needs to be, it is ready, poised, and on active stand-by orders.

I will probably post something once I am on the road in a day.. I have a lot to do, but I wanted to start it all here. If I run into some issues that maybe I need help with related to Grand Cherokee technical questions, I plan to ask the forum.

Thanks guys.

 

Good Luck and God Bless brother!! We got your back!

 

Probably should be in Chat, as it's not a technical question.

 

This is my WJ leaving Youngstown, Ohio. I decided to take the tusted WJ ... only the WJ this run. I think it will do fine. I left the ZJ to my Brother in Law, to keep for now. No time to mess around, and I know the WJ has it in it to do this..

I plugged in the gps coordinates. After I post this, I and am putting it in gear, and leaving Youngstown. My response orders have officially been activated. Somewhere in the South.. in either NC or SC is all I know at this point? The time for me to be there has been moved forward to 1:00pm tomorrow afternoon. Expected to immediately go to work after we all meet up afterwards. I should have about two hours to spare if I leave now, to be able to get to SC on schedule. The next contact will be my location.

 

Everything is going good. I made it to SC on schedule. Leading a small project here for the moment. The staging areas/sites have been established and set-up. Full-scale operations began 5:00am Monday morning. This place did not get hit too bad. We should have this zone back to normal in no time..

The NC Islands; Hattarass and Ocracoke Islands in particular, they have major destruction. We cannot mobilize into the Islands until the floodwaters subside, and a few other things occur first. Whenever that happens, I will leave this area in SC. Pass on command, so I am able to get the Islands going... begin recovery on them.

Thanks guys.

 

I am about a week in.. There is not too much more I am able to do here. I will stay to monitor the progress. The machine will continue operating either way..

I am jumping over to the neighboring county. The people deployed to work this next county over, they arrived today for their duties. This next county; their operations begin on Monday. I will see this through for these zones. There is a lot to get done over the next few weeks. We will kick off another county in another few days as well. By the time this region is all under way, the Islands should be going too. I won't start them, but I will go to finish them. Unless.. There is always a 'unless'...

 

It is ussually 7 days per week work. This project is a little different though. It is on a different scale. It is what's called a 'Force Account'. The damage isn't large enough scale to really warrent calling in the contractors. Instead, it is mostly the city workers getting 'disaster pay' cleaning up their own city. The contractors are minimal, and they are only there to do very specific work in certain areas.

Per this contract, I may get every Sunday off if at all possible.. I will be scheduled off. It is only about 3-4 hrs south of Wilmington, NC where we are currently working. I left around 9:30pm yesterday coming into Wilmington at 1230am last night. I am going to try to do this each Sunday. Wilmington is where I live, and is where most everybody I personally know is currently residing too. I can visit with my Nephew while there.

I have a buddy here named Dave.. I talked to him about my WJ's hardware components. He told me to swing by his shop today. To give him a call, and he will meet me there to take a look at my WJ for me. My WJ's front-end is straight up worn out! Something.. Probably more like, there are some specific things that are wrong dysfunctional at the front-end. I can feel it in the steering wheel while driving between 45mph - 55mph when in cruising-type mode you know what I mean? If I am on the gas or when on the brakes.. it does not do it. The ride is very obviously un-smooth when it does this.. My buddy is a pretty good mechanic.

I will try to explain a little about the specific things I do when I go on a disaster recovery assignment. I will see what I can put down.. if interested to hear about it?

 

Alright bye now be back later on

 

WJ
Leaving Wilmington
Heading south
Back to work

 

I'm driving, and must say that the WJ is already riding better. My buddy and I looked at my Jeep today. He mentioned to me what needs done to it. We undid a few bolts.. Added a couple of these different size washers to the tops of the shock bodies.. Tightened some bolts.. He says the parts are mostly fine. He is going to get me some of the things he thinks it needs some bushings and stuff... Therr is a bracket on the one side that he is going to come up with the best way to fix and reinforce both sides somehow? For now he just repositioned it back together tightening it down it was looose. The upper shock mounts had about an inch+ of play in them which it should have none.. Tightened all of that back up..

It is riding good now!

 

Made it, I'm back on assignment. I figure I may as well get my day started. It is 3:15am right now where I am at..

I have some database tasks to get started. First order of business will be for certifying trucks. They need uploaded into the system to start with.. 5:00am will be for measuring them out, getting them all a placard, and register their drivers and operators to them. There should be about twenty trucks on the new county. We are also adding five trucks working them into the existing current project that is already in progress. Likely will be getting to those five new trucks, putting them to work sometime around at, or just before noon today? We'll have to see the new county get kicked off first beforehand.

I am heading to the laundromat. I've got some dirty clothes that are needing to be cleaned while getting all this together... This is actually a small operation happening here, so it 'should' be smooth sailing? I'll be back on in a bit. I was thinking to maybe do a short re-capping of this years previous 12 months while working Emergency Management Services, traveling in a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

 

The city workers are doing a good job. They don't have tandems, and their trucks don't hold much more than 20c/y apiece. There is a decent little pile accumulated at just a week and a few days in.. We cannot set this pile ablaze in order to reduce the accumulated debris, since it is located here in the city like this. Instead, we will call this a transfer-pile. We will bring in a few transfer trucks. I think three tractor trailers or so should be enough to move it somewhere where it can be dealt with? I believe the plan will be to have it reduced by a chipper machine prior to being hauled away from here by the semi trucks. Spread the mulch out in a field somewhere, recycling it back into the ground. I think I heard it will probably be going to some Christmas tree growers property to enrich the soil, but not totally sure just yet?

 

... By comparison;

Hurricane Michael hit Panama City and Mexico Beach very hard. These guys pictured here were for on a project that was happening down over at the Florida/Georgia line, back in March and April of this year. But, these are the contractors. These guys with their tandems; their truck box's hold around 95 cubic yards worth of debris. The trailers on their trucks ussually hold more than that, at around 110 cubic yards. So, each tandem truck set-up hauls around 200 cubic yards worth of debris each run. One of these guys does the work equivalent to about 10 of the city trucks.

For Florida.. after Michael, we ran several hundred of these guys per day on the one zone.

 

A condensed version of the Codes of Federal Regulations. Several thousand pages worth..
My cabin in Southern Georgia. I lived here for about four months this year.
A few of the guys. We get close to one another on assignment, and like to cook food and eat.
This is the deep south.. The closest gas station, or store of any kind was well over 100 miles away (146 miles to be exact). A single round trip just getting out here will empty the tank of the WJ.. this is when having two extra jugs of gas is very valuable, especially when you are out here by yourself. There is no such thing as cell service in these areas.
One of the things I do is to go out and plot gps points, to locate immanent threats like these. These things we call, 'widowmakers'.. They'll kill you if you are in the wrong spot when they come down.



A lot of these places too. They get condemned, and must go... I go find them.


I will grab my saw when I need to, cut down the leaning trees right alongside the contractors when it seems appropriate. That always suprises them when I do that!
HUSKY or STIHL? Everyone has got their opinion. Husky all the way... They are just better! This is my tiny saw haha. Its no niner, but I did take down a 66" leaner with it once! That is no easy task without a very big saw.
A contractor working on this one. It was blocking the road.
After cutting down a tree, I heard these little guys inside of the hollow. They had to be rescued before the cutters were allowed to go any further.

At the bank of the Flint River.