by APRYL MOCK
Members of the Choctaw Nation Tribal Police, who had been working in Florida following Hurricane Irma, prepare to board their flight to Puerto Rico. They spent nearly two weeks there, strangers in a strange land, offering aid following Hurricane Maria. They did not speak the language and the hurricane had destroyed most of their means of communication. They washed their clothes by hand and put them back on while they are still damp, because there was no electricity. They ate military rations to fuel them for 18-hour days and they rescued 47 patients from the Ryder Hospital when the backup generators failed and lives hung in the balance.
Photo Provided
2/20/2018
Not every man would voluntarily leave his home behind to help perfect strangers rebuild their lives.
Despite having no electricity, a diet consisting primarily of MRE’s and a near constant state of being soaked, four Choctaw Nation Tribal Officers volunteered their time to assist in a hospital evacuation that resulted in the rescue of 47 patients.
On Oct. 5, the Ryder Hospital in Humacau, Puerto Rico lost power for the third and final time in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which followed on the heels of Hurricane Irma.
Quick Response Team Four sprang into action.
One of the Department of the Interior’s emergency response teams to mobilize after the 2017 wave of hurricanes, Quick Response Team Four was made up of tribal public safety officers and Bureau of Indian Affairs agents.
This was the first Interior team to include tribal public safety officers for a FEMA-led response.
The team first responded to aid the Seminole Tribe in Florida following Hurricane Irma, then after Maria hit, 14 officers voluntarily reassigned to Puerto Rico.
Of those 14, four were Choctaw Tribal Police Officers Larry Master, Andy Kenyon, Marvin Jefferson and Zachary Hendrix.
The officers were sad to leave the hospitality of the Seminole tribe.
“There was one day we ate five times. They kept feeding us, so we kept eating. I’ll go back to help them anytime,” joked officer Kenyon, “I think it’s awesome Chief Batton sent us. It wasn’t a Choctaw problem, but he wanted to help anyway.”
The team boarded a flight to Puerto Rico and arrived to find total devastation.
“It changed the color of the ocean. You could see where the blue met the brown of the mudslides,” said Masters.
“It blew every leaf off the trees,” Jefferson said.
According to Masters, “We worked for 24 hours straight some days, and I can’t remember a day we didn’t work at least 16 to 18 hours.”
The team worked to provide security and offer their services to anyone in need.
On the night the hospital went dark, the Choctaw officers escorted military vehicles to safe hospitals and helped land helicopters sent to rescue the most critical patients.
According to Hendrix, “The Puerto Rican people were very gracious. They kept thanking us for being there.”
While evacuating the hospital, the team was completely cut off from the rest of the world.
“There was no radio, the cell towers were down and it took an hour to drive to the hospital from where we were,” Kenyon stated.
Executive Director of Public Safety John Hobbs is proud of his team. “They just kept volunteering, kept going, there’s no quit in them,” Hobbs said.
You won’t find any bravado or hubris if you ask the Choctaw Tribal Police about this experience, but you will find a group of men with a sense of humor.
The team encountered many struggles while in Puerto Rico, not the least of which, a language barrier.
“Our GPS gave us directions in Spanish. Some of the names were so long, by the time it finished telling us we had to make a U-turn,” Masters said, sending the team into a fit of giggles.
While the gentlemen enjoy telling stories and laughing together, there is no doubt they are true heroes. Bearing great physical and emotional discomfort simply because they are good men.