The leader of the Fraternal Order of Police in Columbus is part of the recovery efforts following the devastation left by Hurricane Ida.
FOP Lodge 89 president Alan Trisler, who retired as a lieutenant from the Columbus Police Department in 2017, arrived in southern Louisiana on Sept. 7 as part of the National FOP’s Disaster Area Response Team (DART).
One of DART’s responsibilities is to prepare food for first responders, utility workers and disaster victims, and to help fellow officers too busy helping hurricane victims to look after their own damaged property, Trisler said during a telephone interview from Houma, Louisiana.
“We get up at about 4:30 a.m. and get several hundred breakfasts ready for pick-up by the on-duty officers,” Trisler said. “Then, we go out to the homes of officers and do what we can for their damages.”
But that’s a problem, because it’s hard to slow down first responders long enough to find out if the have damaged property, the FOP president said. Most are too worried about helping others, he said.
Although a truck from the Indianapolis FOP delivered food around the time of his arrival, Trisler said he may be the only Hoosier on site. However, several FOP members from all across the country have arrived to join him in the effort, he said.
While New Orleans has generally rebounded from the Aug. 29 hurricane, hundreds of thousands of people outside the city remain without electricity. In addition, some of the hardest-hit areas still have no water.
“If you took (Columbus’) flood from 2008 — times 100 — and throw in downed power poles and lines, that what I’m seeing,” Trisler said. “There’s plenty of debris, as well as roads blocked with power lines. There’s also lines down because buildings collapsed on them.”
The death toll rose to 26 after 11 people, mostly older residents of retirement age, perished from the heat that has enveloped the area. Air conditioning was not an option to about 342,000 homes and businesses who are still without power nearly two weeks after Ida made landfall, according to the The Associated Press.
Generators have provided the only electricity Trisler has utilized since his arrival, he said.
“There’s plenty of gas,” he explained. “There’s just not many pumps because they have no electricity.”
The DART team is focusing mostly on towns and small cities southwest of New Orleans. Headquartered in the area of Raceland (population 10,193), the team first went to the town of Thibodaux (population 1,467).
Then, the FOP members focused their attention on the larger city of Houma (population 33,344). They were also scheduled to be in Lockport (population 2,578), a short distance east of Houma.
While the FOP president said he made a one-week commitment to help in Louisiana, he said the situation keeps changing day-to-day, so he’s not certain when he’ll return to Bartholomew County.
