Students help with disaster relief at Claytor Lake

This is Crater Lake. It's a dam portion of the new River. A lot of the New rivers tributaries overflowed and flooded really badly due to the hurricane. So there's a lot of hazardous materials in this lake. Center 060 over. It's about 22 miles a lake. We are here to assist with clearing some debris and resecuring high value assets. So let's go on and snow your morning lines. When big things like this happen, it's not often that you specifically get to go down and really put your hands on and help out any way possible. So everybody, I'm excited to help out any way that they can have me help out. We're glad to be able to do our part for it because this is something that has multiple levels, FMA, EPA, federal, local, state. Even people out of our jurisdiction are here. Everyone is here giving a helping hand, trying to do something better, and trying to help this community. Directly off the ball and start a bot. Were told by higher ups on our chain of command that we would be needed at some point this week, and we were put on stand by, ready to go basically at any time. And then once the call came, we were all ready. Obviously, academics comes first, but when it comes to the possibility of people needing help out here, that takes number one. It's an absolutely amazing opportunity for us in the unit to be out here. The auxiliary is the volunteer organization within the Coast Guard. Everybody out here that you're going to see today with auxiliary on their hats and uniforms. They're all here for no pay. They're volunteering their time because they really do care. That's not a lot. It's been really interesting to see a lot of the stuff that we've learned on paper, such as the incident management that FEMA has in place. We've actually been able to see that in practice with all these different organizations coming together and working on the same goal. There's not many times where we're actually able to get called up and do something that actually has an effect on somebody else's safety and well being. And it made me really proud to be part of the auxilary. I'm going to have to do this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and then Sunday as well, and this is probably going to go into next week, too, and I'm fully prepared to make that commitment. Even with all the school that I'm going to have to make up, even with all the other duties that I still have on top of this, being able to serve my community and to help them out there really is nothing more rewarding. The auxiliary is a really good way to do just, like, hands on service where you really feel like you're making a difference. So I think when my head hits the pill tonight, I'm going to be sleeping with a smile on my face.