Thursday, December 02, 2010

Looking out for one another

We had a scare yesterday evening when one of our elderly residents went missing from his home. Immediately alerts went out, a large search party was organized and a search helicopter was called in. After about 5 hours of searching, he was found alive. Everyone is very grateful and relieved. We wish him and his family well as they recover from this experience.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Click on the photo below to view a selection of pewter snowflakes from Village Craftsmen's online catalog.



Our latest Ocracoke Newsletter is a history of the early twentieth century Doxsee Clam Factory on Ocracoke island. Click on the following link to go directly there: http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news112110.htm.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:57 AM

    Philip,

    I hope that you are gathering all the details. This adventure could make a chapter in your next book. (You can change some names to protect the innocent.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous1:22 PM

    I am very thankful that everything turned out well!!!!

    My mother has demencia and I took her to Ocracoke this past October. I had to closely watch her. Things can happen so fast! She had a great time and I'm thankful I could bring her on this trip.

    I'm so glad this particular elderly resident was found in time as the temperatures are dangerously cold right now.

    I can just imagine the Ocracoke residents all gathering together & jumping into quick action to locate this missing person. Great devotion towards one another! I'm sure every volunteer celebrated the good news when this person was found, safe and sound!

    What a happy ending for everyone!

    Thanks for sharing, Philip!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11:54 PM

    Question, Philip--You said a large search party was formed. How does the call go out for such a thing on Ocracoke? A siren? Word of mouth? Or perhaps more informally? I'm curious whether there's some sort of procedure or mechanism for alerting the entire community in case of urgent matters.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jamie Tunnell, who works for Hyde County, sends out mass e-mails when there is an urgent notice. There is also an automatic phone alert system that calls all the homes on the island with a recorded message. The e-mails and phone messages are used for such things as missing persons, school events, hurricane evacuations and so on.
    As far as fire calls go, before cell phones, pagers and scanners, the fire department did use a siren to alert the volunteers of a call. Then they would set up a chalk board outside the fire department noting the location of the fire so any latecomers would know where to go. As far as I know, all 911 calls now get sent out on the scanner and the emergency professionals who are on call respond as needed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous10:35 AM

    Very organized way of communication on such an isolated island!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous9:47 AM

    i tried finding more information through other sources on this event. i would have thought the fact a helicopter a coast guard police or sheriff department dollars were spent there would have been more transparency on this issue. merely to answer questions a reader may have. but i guess the mention was to commend the residents for their efforts -- i mean if folks knew where the person was found that information may help the next time search parties are organized

    ReplyDelete