I wanted to talk to East Ridge Fire Chief Mike Williams about his experiences in flood-stricken Houston, but I thought I would give him time to rest and decompress.
So, when I went to Corner Cafe for lunch and saw the city’s fire trucks and battalion commander’s vehicle and the familiar white SUV that Chief Williams drives he and his men kind of found me.
About a dozen of East Ridge’s finest were gathered around a couple of tables pushed together and they were deep into a fine lunch prepared by Rodney and Melissa. The Chief was near the head of the table shoulder to shoulder with his bride, Cynthia. He grinned at me as I walked by and took a seat at the counter. I turned from my seat and told Mike that I would catch up with him later.
Later turned out to be about 15 minutes as the Chief’s impromptu homecoming party broke up about the time the call came in for an automatic fire alarm at an apartment complex on South Seminole.
Mike came up to me and asked what I was having as he pulled out some folding money from his wallet preparing to pay for his bill. When I told him it was a fried bologna sandwich, he gave Melissa some needling, telling her he didn’t know it was on the menu.
I asked him who he was going to send to South Florida, as those poor folks down there are bracing for a hurricane of epic proportions. Mike grinned and said it didn’t look good for those in the path of the storm and they were in for a tough time.
It seems our East Ridge firefighters have no limits when it comes to helping folks in bad trouble. Remember, Chief and a handful of other firefighters took off for Gatlinburg in that burning hell up in Sevier County last November. Now, fresh back from Houston, the guys who have a bond like no other and are willing to lay it all on the line for perfect strangers in desperate need may be headed to another disaster area.
So, I asked Mike what it was like down in Texas? In his usual understated way he said it was bad but that his “Strike Force” was ready for just about anything. He touched on the 16-hour days of trying to help in any way they could.
He praised the “Cajun Navy,” that group of civilians who loaded up from the Gulf Coast and brought their own trucks, boats and experience to help pluck poor souls out of floodwater that had destroyed everything they had in the world.
Mike said the Cajun Navy was well organized and apparently men and women who had gained experience in the armed forces or perhaps in emergency services in their past.
He didn’t talk so much about the grim task of hauling people to safety, sometimes when they were forced to leave behind their saturated and tattered worldly possessions. He did talk about an encounter with some guy “who had a big badge on his belt,” and asked if Mike’s crew would be in the same parking lot that evening where they had staged an operation.
“The guy asked us if we were Masons,” Chief Williams said. Mike said that about a third of the rescuers he was working shoulder to shoulder with answered that they were indeed part of the Masonic Order.
Well, that night – after another 16-hour day – the guy with the badge on his belt brings back a crew of folks with a bunch of cooking gear, including a flat-top grill, and feeds about 90 rescuers a hardy meal. Mike said the man with the badge had some folks on his side who were restaurant owners. That’s how they helped in the effort.
Chief Williams said he and Chris Peters left out of Houston at about 7 a.m. on Tuesday. They got back into East Ridge at about 1 a.m. on Wednesday.
“All along the way in Texas people were out lining the roadway and as we drove by they were waving American flags,” he said as he monitored the activity of the alarm his men had just answered. “It gets to you.”
Mike said that Channel 3 was coming out to interview him at the station in a couple hours. After that he said he was going to the house and take a couple days off.
“I still haven’t unpacked,” he said making his way out the door.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he packs his bags again in a few days, after he has caught his second wind, to head down to South Florida. A storm is coming and thank God we have men like Mike, Pete and the rest of the crew at that fire hall in East Ridge who have the skills, the willingness and more than anything else the heart to go and help.
