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Hurricane Isabel Emergency Ice Distribution

Event Date: September 21, 2003

Event Start: 1:00pm

Event End: Around 9:00pm

Location: The Mall In Columbia

Event Operations: Hand Out Ice to Residents Still Affected by Widespread Power Outages

Event Report

Around 12pm, I received a phone call from Ms.

Pam Simonson, the Disaster Volunteer Coordinator at

Volunteer Center Serving Howard County. The call...

concerning ice distribution at The Mall in Columbia when

in the next hour. In desperate need of volunteers, the

volunteer center wanted to know if we could help. Of

course, we were there. Luckily for them, Unit 621 and

myself were taking a rest after the Police Pace we had

just finished earlier that morning.

Upon arriving at the mall, we were both greeted by

several County Fire Fighters as well as County Police

Officers and recruits (several of them recognizing us

from the Police Pace earlier that day) and several volunteers from the Volunteer Center.

The man who was in charge, Chief Frease (yes, it is pronounced Freeze!) was the coordinator of what he later called Operation Igloo.

Soon, the ice arrived. A greatly generous donation of 1,800 bags of ice and approximately 400 gallons of water from Giant Foods was ready to give away to residents in great need of relief from the humid conditions.

What a great feeling it was to hand out the ice. People

drove from as far away as northern Baltimore County to

get ice for their family and friend.

Throughout the afternoon, everything became systematic

and fun. We had made many friends and shared many

common interests with the fire fighters, police and other

volunteers. By about 9pm, traffic had slowed down and

we decided to put up for the night to possibly hand out

ice the next day!

Thank you to the Volunteer Center Serving Howard County and more specifically Pam Simonson for keeping us informed and finding things for us to do after such an event and too all the volunteers fire fighters and police officers for their help in handing out ice, we all gave a lot of people a little relief after this major disaster.

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