Dave Senters and Amy Cooley hold the awards they received during the 57th Annual Business Meeting of the Emergency Management Association of Georgia.
Dave Senters and Travis Slocum of Dalton volunteered to help flood victims in South Carolina. They’re shown with other volunteers outside a house where they tore out the water-damaged sections.
Demolition work like this by volunteers in Dave Senters’ group in South Carolina set up repair efforts by Habitat for Humanity.
Imagine the home where you grew up, where your mom and dad passed away, where you have spent the past decade lovingly renovating it as you could afford.
Then imagine that same home, the one that holds so many precious memories, filled with the ravaging floodwaters that struck so many other houses in South Carolina in early October.
Dave Senters of Dalton saw such a home during his recent volunteer efforts to help some of the flood victims in small communities near Georgetown, S.C., between Charleston and Myrtle Beach.
According to the latest estimates, the heavy rains (nearly 27 inches fell in one town) Oct. 1-5 combined with at least 17 dam failures or overflows to literally drown many communities in South Carolina, causing an estimated $18 billion in property damage.
Mr. Senters knew he wanted to do his small part to help the flood victims.
Back in 2011, he had loaded up his “big souped-up heavy duty truck” and headed to Ringgold with his chainsaw, eager to help after deadly tornadoes hit the small town to our north that April.
“Those people need some help,” he said to himself then as he headed up I-75, only to be turned down once he arrived because it was too dangerous for well-meaning but untrained people like him to enter the scene.
That’s when Mr. Senters heard about the Whitfield County Emergency Management Agency’s Community Emergency Response Team program and, like more than 200 other citizens have done since 2010, completed three intense days of training to learn how to take care of his family and his neighbors in the aftermath of a disaster.
“After joining CERT, I can see where you don’t want people in there after a disaster who don’t know what to look for,” Mr. Senters admits now. “I mean, I’m average intelligence so I know if there’s a line down on the road, leave it alone. But what about the gas, what about the propane bottles and things that you don’t think of on a regular basis? Everyone knows, hey, that’s a live wire down, don’t touch it. But some of those other things … not so much.”
Since completing the CERT program in 2011, Mr. Senters has been an active member of the organization. While his recent trip to South Carolina wasn’t an official CERT activity, Mr. Senters definitely had the blessings of the local CERT leaders, including Jeff Ownby, deputy director of Whitfield EMA.
“Even though our CERT program didn’t directly respond to the floods in South Carolina, Dave did, and he’s a big part of our CERT program,” Mr. Ownby said.
Mr. Senters’ efforts have even gained statewide notice. He received the Emergency Management Association of Georgia’s Volunteer of the Year Award during its 57th Annual Business Meeting in Dillard in early November. Amy Cooley, administrative assistant for Whitfield EMA, also won the President’s Award.
Mr. Senters credits his association with CERT for fueling his desire to help in South Carolina.
“I wouldn’t have went without the CERT and EMA’s blessing,” he said, “and they were very supportive from day one.”
As plant manager at Dalton-based Challenger Industries, Mr. Senters says he is fortunate to have the kind of flexible schedule that allows him to take time off to help others in need.
“The more I thought about it, the more it had to happen, one way or another,” he said of his trip to South Carolina..
Mr. Senters researched organizations that help disaster victims and found one that was a perfect fit for him called Allhands.org, a worldwide disaster relief organization that he highly recommends.
“Oddly enough, it’s not easy to volunteer with some agencies because they want a two-week commitment,” he said. “With my job and family, I just wasn’t able to commit for that long. Fortunately, All Hands doesn’t care if it was just one day or one month.”
As he prepared for the trip, others in the Dalton community wanted to help, though they weren’t able to physically make the trip to South Carolina.
“They said, ‘What can we do to help?’ Well, I told them we need some supplies, and my big truck’s not real easy on gas. So we actually had some sponsors that paid for the whole trip. It’s easier when you have the support of the community and the support of your trainers and teachers to venture out on something like this.”
Mr. Senters had learned through his CERT training that it’s best not to rush into a disaster scene, so he waited a few days before heading to South Carolina.
“We didn’t go as soon as the flood happened because through CERT you find out that a lot of people want to volunteer initially and then they have to return to their jobs and life,” he said, “so we purposely gave it some time for some of that to settle down. We wanted those first responders to volunteer as long as they could, and once that calmed down a little bit, then the second wave comes in. And we were part of that second wave.”
Mr. Senters was part of a group of about 25 people, ironically none of whom was from South Carolina.
“We had one from Scotland, England, Washington state, California, Utah, Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and a couple from Georgia, so the locals had definitely gone back to doing what they do every day,” he said, adding that he made the trip with his brother-in-law, Travis Slocum.
A veteran of more than seven years with the Marine Corps, Mr. Senters is used to the barracks lifestyle that was the case in South Carolina.
“The way they are structured, everybody participates, everybody goes out on the work details, and not only that, everybody has chores to do back at base camp,” he said. “You may be the cook one night for all the other volunteers, you may be cleaning the restrooms, you may be doing dishes, and that was a good environment for me because you’re there to volunteer, you’re not on vacation – so pitch in.”
Mr. Senters and Mr. Slocum spent two days helping the flood victims, part of four- or eight-person teams that were deployed into outlying communities near Georgetown after others had assessed the homes and gotten permission to demolish the damaged areas inside their homes to set up subsequent rebuilding efforts by Habitat for Humanity.
“Our job was to remove everything,” Mr. Senters said. “I mean, it’s wet – so the furniture and anything four feet and below had to go out.”
But that doesn’t mean it was easy emotionally for the homeowners or the volunteers.
“You go into a person’s house and you start carrying all their stuff outside – it’s a little emotional for the homeowners,” Mr. Senters said. “It would be for me. It WAS for me and I wasn’t even the homeowner. But your heart breaks for them. Like one gentleman, he said he grew up in this house, his mom and dad died in this house, he’s been restoring it for the past eight to 10 years as he could afford it. And we’re there to rip it out.”
At each home, all the flooring had to come up, drywall two to four feet high usually had to be cut out, and the insulation had to be removed, setting up treatment for mold and mildew.
“So we were primarily just going in and destroying people’s homes,” Mr. Senters said. “That’s a rough way to say it, but you had to get rid of all the bad stuff – sheetrock and water just don’t mix.”
Don’t get the idea that Mr. Senters is crazy for publicity.
“l’ll be honest with you. If it wasn’t for promoting CERT, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Mr. Senters said recently, “because it’s not about me, it’s about all the good this program does. And it does a lot of good.”
Mr. Senters is quick to point out that even though Whitfield County has been fortunate to avoid natural disasters the past several years, local CERT volunteers have remained busy doing things like helping with the fire department’s smoke detector drive, the firefighter rehab program that offers relief to firefighters as they are actually fighting fires, and search and rescue training.
“We also do several first aid stations each year for events,” Mr. Senters said, noting that some CERT members have completed extensive first responder training just like full-time firefighters. “That frees up medical personnel that don’t need to be at these events, so they can ride the ambulances and do what they need to do to help people in need. We’re certainly not trying to put anybody out of a job; we just want to help.”
Mr. Ownby says there is a core group of about 50 or 60 CERT members who actually recertify for CERT every year after their original training session.
“They take continuing education type training which is offered here once a month, and a lot of times these guys and girls are also becoming CERT instructors and teaching modules for new students,” Mr. Ownby said. “In fact, Dave’s daughter Christina is pretty active in CERT, too. She does all of our moulage (makeup) for any kind of training exercise, and she’s also started teaching modules.”
Mr. Senters says the response from the flood victims in South Carolina was “phenomenal.”
“We got a lot of hugs, a lot of ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and a lot of positive feedback like ‘we couldn’t do this without people like you coming to help us,’ ” he said. “It was good. Dare I say, it rekindled part of my American spirit because to me that’s what America is all about – helping your neighbors and things of that nature.”
While Mr. Senters may not have officially been acting as a CERT volunteer during his recent trip to South Carolina, he still maintains the training he’s received through the program was invaluable in his volunteer efforts there.
“The whole concept of CERT is you take care of yourself, your family, your neighbors, your community, and then wherever you’re needed,” Mr. Senters said, “and so that’s pretty much what we did in South Carolina.”