Stacy and Kaye Harbin salvage items from around the foundation of their home near 42nd Street in Mexico Beach, Florida after damage from hurricane Michael on October 24, 2018. [RICHARD GRAULICH/pbpost.com] ▲

As Hurricane Michael moved ashore on Oct. 10, 911 calls flooded the Bay County switchboards, inundating operators. Power poles snapping in the wind, sending live wires into trees and houses. Windows shattering. Trees falling through homes. Electrical fires raging out of control. Roofs peeling back. Mobile homes being shredded in the wind.

PANAMA CITY — They came in by the thousands.



As Hurricane Michael moved ashore on Oct. 10, 911 calls flooded the Bay County switchboards, inundating operators. Power poles snapping in the wind, sending live wires into trees and houses. Windows shattering. Trees falling through homes. Electrical fires raging out of control. Roofs peeling back. Mobile homes being shredded in the wind.







Call after call, all operators could say was that no first responders would be coming for any reason. They were standing down until conditions were safe to begin search and rescue. They would take down the caller's address and send someone out as soon as conditions let up, but with no way to know how long the storm would last, and thousands of other callers needing help, it could be hours.



Until then, they would have to make due with what they had. Retreat to an interior room or a bathroom. Push a mattress over broken windows. Use a blanket for cover. Hunker down in place. Don't try to leave while debris was flying through 145 mph winds.



"I can't tell you not to get on the road," one operator told a caller who was thinking about fleeing their destroyed home. "But it's more dangerous outside than it is inside right now."



A review of over 200 911 calls in the three hours during the height of the storm by the News Herald revealed heartbreak, chaos, destruction and, most of all, fear as residents watched their world be torn apart. Through it all, though, the 911 operators remained a steady, calming presence, even as they knew there was nothing they could do to help.







In one call, a man watched his neighbor collapse in his yard during the storm. He's not breathing. His pulse is fading. With the storm howling around them, the operator walks the man through performing CPR until it becomes clear there's nothing more the man can do.



In another call, a woman in a second floor apartment with young children frantically yells that the roof caved in and her ceiling is about to collapse. There's nowhere safe in their apartment, but the unit across the hall is empty. Try to get in there, the operator tells her.



"Do what you need to do," the operator says. "You take care of those babies."



At one point, the lines were flooded by calls from security companies, triggered by alarms going off because of broken windows or blown open doors. The operators are patient at first, explaining that no, there wasn't a burglary. They were in the middle of a Category 4, almost 5 hurricane. No they wouldn't be responding until after the storm. Eventually, though, the calls become so numerous that the operators begin disconnecting almost immediately to move on to other emergencies.







Many of the calls were hopeless and desperate as they were left at the mercy of the storm, hiding in bathtubs or closets with trees through their home, windows blown out, water pouring in, natural gas leaking out or their worldly possessions destroyed. Knowing no help was coming but calling anyways as a last little bit of hope.



It was, in short, an emergency operator's worst nightmare.

