Posted: 8/28/07
Sheriffís dispatcher expected a slow night, then disaster struck
By Tom Murphy
Special to the Argus
Jennifer Blocker thought her 12 hour shift as a dispatcher at the Houston County Sheriffís office on a Saturday night would be very quiet. "I figured the rain would keep people at home and keep the traffic stops down. Instead, that rain had the opposite effect," she recalled of the night of August 18.
"We began to have early calls from people who had water in their basements wondering what to do," she recalled. The disaster was just beginning.
About two and a half hours into the shift, the first call came in of a mud slide on Highway 16 between Hokah and La Crescent. There were several more calls as motorists became stuck in the mud. Then, identical calls came in from State Highway 26 on what is called ëthe river road.í
Normally, she receives four to five calls on the 911 lines in a shift. The night that was to unfold would see well in excess of 500 telephone calls to the young mother of three boys. She and her husband are expecting another child, their first girl, at the end of October.
By the time she completed her shift at 7 a.m., up to 17 inches of rain had fallen near the northern end of the county and two people perished in the floodwaters.
Only two major thoroughfares remained open- Highway 44 from Hokah to Spring Grove, and Highway 76 from Houston to Eitzen. Every other state road would be closed. Nearly one third of the county roads would become impassable. There has been no formal count for township roads.
Mudslides and floods had severely damaged all forms of property mostly in the areas in the river valleys in the county. Hundreds of people were to be driven into shelters.
All of the communications for this disaster emergency would pass through the sheriffís office which handles all radio and dispatch for the county and city police departments as well as city fire departments and ambulance services.
The volume of information handled by Blocker that night was enormous. "We also monitor and talk on local frequencies for fire and police and also the repeater frequencies for fire and police that come through towers serving the towns in the valleys, four frequencies in all," Blocker said. "Then there is Minnesota State Patrol and Tri-State Ambulance frequencies. Oh, yes, we also have ëpoint to pointí radio with other counties."
Blocker said she didnít have time to become nervous. "We were way too busy fielding calls and sending messages." About 10:30 p.m., former dispatcher Jess Lewis came in and volunteered to help answer the phones. The La Crescent resident was to stay all night and help Blocker field calls, as she also handled the radio traffic.
"At 12:30 a.m. Sunday, reports of houses caving in prompted me to call our emergency services manager Kurt Kuhlers," Sheriff Doug Ely said. It was at that point the Emergency Operations Center began.
"We contacted every law enforcement person not on duty to come in," Ely recalled. "
The one memory Blocker will probably keep is that of monitoring and coordinating the radio traffic on the efforts to save three stranded motorists in a vehicle on County 6 two miles west of La Crescent on Pine Creek. The water was 20 feet over the road. Houston County authorities could not reach the scene.
A La Crescent policeman was the first to capsize in a rescue boat. He was rescued by three La Crescent volunteer firemen and then that boat capsized. An air boat operated by a DNR officer rescued those four people and two of the three motorists. A third motorist, the driver of the vehicle, drowned. The driver had taken care to get his two passengers into a tree.
Ely remembers well the number of people who contacted him during the night to offer assistance. "Unfortunately, we were so busy answering and responding to calls, we could not coordinate the needs. By the time we got back to the volunteers, they had already acted."
Later she worried about "those people who needed us" who could not reach the sheriffís office because the phone lines went down during the night. When she went to bed on Sunday morning, she continued to wonder about the dispatcherís shift on duty. She got up around noon and called in a few times over the next two hours to see if they needed help.
It was back to work for another 12 hour shift on Sunday night. "Normally I gather information from callers and then pass it along to patrols. On Sunday night, the process was reversed. Callers were asking for information and I was giving it out to them."
Blocker has held her three-quarter time position at the sheriffís office for nearly 18 months. Before that, she was a dispatcher in Allamakee County for five years. Last week, she worked 12 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday. Then, she worked 12 hour shifts on Wednesday and Thursday and followed that with four days off.
By the time she returned to work on Wednesday of last week, she was relieved to hear of the lifting of the flood warnings. "I was a little anxious when I came into work."
Many police officers continued to work overtime in the affected areas, Ely said during an interview last Thursday. "Some of our local units were sent to Rushford to assist authorities and the Minnesota National Guard. There have been reports of looting in Rushford," the sheriff said. "I not only want to recognize the work of our people, but the efforts of every police force, fire department, and first responder unit in Houston County.
Ely and Kuhlers canít even start naming all of the police and sheriff officers who responded from other counties in Iowa and Minnesota. Even on Thursday of last week, emergency services vehicles from as far away as Cottonwood County were seen parked outside the courthouse.
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