An Audit of Heroes

Robert Sprague, Findlay's city auditor, was interviewed for The Courier's one-year anniversary coverage of the August 2007 flood as someone who went "beyond the call" in his service to the community.

Click HERE to read Sprague's diary account of the events.

Below, in his words, are others who deserve recognition:

*****

I can think of some other “behind the scenes people” that you could call heroes.

For instance, our chief engineer Brian Hurt noticed the red pencil drawing from 1981 and put the map on the table and said, “This is what we are going to be dealing with.” That helped us visually figure out that we needed to divide our response with a north command post and south command post for police and fire.

Matt Trevor, a battalion chief, should be listed as a hero. He came up with the idea to command and control all the outside (37 different outside fire departments) fire boats that came to help us. He also put one of our men in each boat with our radios. In my opinion, this command decision may have made the difference in our being able to respond without fatalities during the flood.

Matt Carpenter, our assistant chief engineer, personally led the charge at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning to sandbag the water treatment plant to save the water supply for about 60,000 people.

Todd Richards, our zoning inspector, helped sandbag the AT&T building behind Wilson’s, which serves as the nerve center for all phone and cellular communications in Hancock County. Without it, all the phones in the county would have gone dead, leaving us very little means to communicate with the city employees. We were able to sandbag it and prevent any serious problems.

After the flood, Barb Wilhelm, our health department supervisor, did a miraculous job of inoculating people for tetanus and hepatitis A, even though her department lost most of its equipment in the flood. She also saved some key items from the health offices while the flood waters were rising.

Lu Draper did an outstanding, miraculous job of opening the CUBE during the flood and creating a shelter that the national Red Cross described as "wonderful."

Finally, I thank Ron Kear, the local Ohio Department of Transportation manager for the Hancock County office. His group cleared more debris than any other single entity after the flood, and if it weren’t for them, we would have taken months, not days, to clean up our city. They came riding in on front loaders and dump trucks like the cavalry. I have never witnessed a more professional and effective group than the ODOT team.

*****

Visit www.thecourier.com to learn about more folks who went Beyond the Call.

Comments

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[Former resident of Findlay, ohio]

Hello, Findlay residents and officials, and I read with certain interest how people were heroes - and that was good for them, and for Findlay, in general. Still, as I wrote a year ago, Findlay does not seem to want to admit that their officials waited far too long to do much of anything ahead of time. It was well known, around the year 2000 or so, that something like this horrible event could happen. I moved into town in 2001, and couldn't get over how the information was well-publicized in The Courier, and yet the town's government couldn't seem to use the seniority of then Congressman Oxley's influence. And as I wrote before, I imagine he could have gotten a lot done about potential - which became actual - flooding problems. But, go ahead, pat yourselves on the back, as you always seem want to do.

Amazing idiocy, not Grace.

Ben Franklin, I believe it was, stated, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[city worker]

thats good .. did they get overtime pay ??????