Shakopee sends medical, electric help to hurricane victims

Shakopee Valley News

Several Shakopee organizations and residents saw the damage to Texas and Florida after Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma and took action.

The Shakopee Public Utilities Commission sent a team of four linemen to help in Florida as part of a call from the Minnesota Municipal Utility Association and the American Public Power Association.

“If there’s any storms, if we had storms up here or any other people had storms and we request mutual aid, we can get on a list and they’ll put out a call,” Electric Superintendent Greg Drent said.

The Minnesota Municipal Utility Association put out a call. All of the Shakopee linemen volunteered and four were sent to Florida in two trucks — Jordan Schuettpelz, Cody Schuett, Brad Gustafson and Justin Rotert.

The team from Shakopee, along with other teams from Minnesota, headed to Kissimmee for two days and later to Lake Worth.

The linemen worked to reenergize the lines and restore power systems from areas affected by Hurricane Irma.

“The Minnesota guys all stayed together, for the most part,” Schuett said.

The linemen had to be careful to ground the lines before working because the system was unfamiliar and lines could be down, but electricity would still be a danger because of generators connected to the system.

“If they don’t connect it right to their house, it’ll back feed to the line we are working on,” Schuett said. “We triple-tested everything and grounded it because you just don’t know what people are doing.”

The Minnesota team was also unfamiliar with many of the dangers common to Florida, such as alligators or swampy areas.

“Safety was the utmost there,” Schuettpelz said. “As we discussed internally and with everyone, the most important thing is that we get home at the end of the day so take it a little slower than normal and make sure we do a good job so we can get home.”

Schuettpelz and Schuett both said they will remember how grateful the residents were to the linemen for restoring power.

“They were sitting there for a week now with no power, it’s 95 degrees out, it’s really humid and when you turn the lights back on for them they just praise you and come out and thank you,” Schuett said.

Residents gave the linemen water, Gatorade, food and thank you cards, Schuettpelz said.

“Just the opportunity to go down there was enough to make a year out of it,” Schuettpelz said.

Local woman helps in Texas

Donna Lebens, a nationally registered paramedic from Shakopee, was sent to Texas to assist with victims from Hurricane Harvey as part of the Minnesota Disaster Medical Assistance Team.

The team consists of about 100 medical professionals including physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists and non-medical personnel as well.

“We provide medical services for large disasters when the federal government receives a request for aid,” Lebens said.

The team traveled to Dallas before the hurricane and then went to Houston, setting up in the George R. Brown Convention Center, providing medical assistance like prescriptions, wound care and emergency services to victims staying in the shelters.

“We also stayed there ourselves, so we had a room upstairs in the convention center where we had our cots and our personal belongings,” Lebens said.

Patients were divided into three categories based on how serious the threat to health was — green, yellow and red. Red would be like someone not breathing, yellow would be a little more advanced care such as someone who is asthmatic and green was the wound care, immunizations and medications.

“The medical team, we worked 24/7 so we worked 12-hour shifts each day,” Lebens said.

Lebens joined the disaster team after seeing the damage from Hurricane Katrina as part of an aid team with her employer. Lebens also helped with Hurricane Sandy.

“We do a lot of training, a lot of preparation,” Lebens said.

Helping can take a toll, Lebens said.

“You don’t always have showers, you don’t always have a comfy bed to sleep on so you don’t always get a lot of sleep,” she said. “It can be tough that way. It’s also tough to stay in touch with your families.” 

St. Gertrude’s sends supplies

St. Gertrude’s Health and Rehabilitation Center sent the entirety of its emergency supplies to relief efforts through Heart to Heart International.

“When all the destruction was evident by the news, we wanted to help out with Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma,” Nurse Administrator Tracy Cowell said.

Supplies included gloves, masks and isolation gowns as well as items donated by staff such as baby wipes, toothbrushes, combs and toothpaste.

The center ended up sending six pallets of items.​