2024 Tropical Weather Thread

efil4stnias said

oh fully agree- that moment the Chief should have said " go here, we are coordinating with local pilots " - but my guess is he wasnt even thinking that far ahead.

Not making excuses for this guy, but you have been Fire Chief for however many years in a relatively quiet/peaceful area of North Carolina....never seen ANYTHING like this, and all of a sudden you are thrust into a position that you simply arent equipped to handle, in THAT moment.

I cant imagine the amount of "what now" running thru his head Sunday - not knowing much and getting updated bad news probably every 15 min.

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And for what it's worth, the guy is a fire chief, but he's also a human being that likely had his home and the home of everyone he knows destroyed. Not to mention that the way of life he had in that little tourist town is likely over. So, he likely was not thinking particularly straight and likely had very little sleep while all this was happening. It was a bad decision, but those happen in those situations. I don't envy the people who are expected to be fully functional at times like those and I don't expect that a fire chief in Lake Lure ever expected anything close to this to happen. Nor was he trained to handle anything like this.