OCTOBER 3, 2024 — “Call out the Guard”, a cliché in 1950’s movies, but a call to action for hundreds of North Carolina National Guard Soldiers and Airmen deployed for the North Carolina Government’s Hurricane Helene response. Their mission, provide military capabilities in support of state authorities in order to protect the lives and properties of fellow citizens.
“Help is on the way, we are going to be there until the mission is finished,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Wes Morrison, NCNG assistant adjutant general for maneuver.
Before the hurricane made landfall in Florida, North Carolina state and local government leaders prepared for the worst. Across the state, public safety and emergency management leaders prepped for catastrophic flooding, infrastructure failure, evacuations, blocked roads and highways, widespread damage and disruption of basic services.
“Our National Guard is embedded at the local level working with emergency management, they know the needs,” Morrison said.
Faced with such a task the state leaders asked for NCNG support. On order by the governor, the NCNG called for volunteers for state active duty to report to armories and readiness centers and other NCNG facilities or report direct to civilian leadership statewide at warehouses, emergency management sites, community colleges, airports and many, many other local and state government sites.
“They help fill in the holes, we work with the Guard all the time,” Jay Joyster, an emergency planner with North Carolina Emergency Management.
Senior NCNG leaders kept in constant contact with civilian government superiors preparing NCNG force packages, preselected teams of Soldiers and Airmen able to provide skills and services matched to the local government needs. Armory support packages prepare NCNG facilities to quickly process and deploy Soldiers and Airmen, all hazards response teams with high mobility multi-wheeled vehicles able to cross rugged terrain and washed-out areas issued radios designed to integrate with local government leadership, truck force packages with long haul trucks to deliver much needed supplies on demand from local and state government agencies, and many other teams.
“We are very qualified to do the job, we are logistics, anything that has to be moved, that’s what we do,” U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Leslie Cook, noncommissioned officer in charge small air terminal at the Charlotte Air National Guard Base.
All these Soldiers and Airmen planned, prepared, and deployed with one overall goal, to save lives and property of North Carolinians.
“It is what you raise your right hand for, it is home,” said U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Stonehouse, North Carolina Emergency Management Central Branch NCNG command and control noncommissioned officer in charge.
By Sgt. 1st Class Robert Jordan