By Lori Lyons

Contributing Writer

HAHNVILLE – As Hurricane Sandy bore down on the eastern seaboard last month, St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office spokesman Capt. Pat Yoes kept a watchful eye on the storm from his home in Norco. And he was worried.

For one thing, he had friends there – fellow officers he knew from his time serving as national secretary of the Fraternal Order of Police. And, a veteran of many Louisiana hurricanes as well as a law enforcement official, Yoes knew what the east coast was in for. And he knew what they would need to do after.

So just hours after Sandy made landfall, devastating much of the eastern coastline, Yoes was on a plane to Washington, D.C., and just hours after that, he was driving a U-Haul truck in a caravan of about 14 vehicles headed to Long Beach Island, N.J., with much-needed supplies.

Then, for five days Yoes cooked, fed, doled out supplies and offered sage advice to shell-shocked law enforcement officials, spending the nights sleeping in that very U-Haul he had driven even as temperatures dipped into the 40s. Later he wrote on his personal Facebook page about what an honor it had been to do it all

It was all a part of giving back, Yoes said.

“Well, I guess you could say it started on Aug. 29, 2005,” Yoes said. “Because New Jersey FOP were one of the first ones to come down here to help us in St. Charles after Katrina. Them and the (Washington) D.C. FOP. So when the storm hit, I was in contact with them the whole time. And when they asked for assistance, we went.”

The Fraternal Order of Police is the nation’s largest organization of law enforcement officers with more than 300,000 members across the country. The main purpose of the group is to represent officers and help them improve working conditions and officer safety. And oftentimes, they come to one another’s aid.

Yoes said after Katrina many groups came to Louisiana, St. Charles Parish included, bringing much-needed supplies. With lessons learned, the FOP later organized several mobile response teams throughout the country to rush aid to embattled police departments, like the ones on the east coast right now.  

Ed Branigan, a retired New Jersey policeman, serves as the national vice president of the FOP and is a longtime friend of Yoes. It was Branigan who requested the group’s assistance after Sandy sent a tidal surge into Long Beach Island and many of the surrounding towns, causing damage much like the River Parishes experienced with Hurricane Isaac. But just days later, a winter storm struck dropping up to a foot of snow in some areas.

“This was a storm of historic proportions in New Jersey,” Branigan said. “Sandy was a category one hurricane, combined with a nor’easter. We’re pretty used to having nor’easters around here, but combined with a category one hurricane was pretty ferocious.”

Yoes said he and his crew, including a group from Florida, hit the New Jersey ground running.

The response team arrived armed with provisions, tents and loads of clothing.

The group also brought a self-sufficient mobile kitchen and began cooking hamburgers. Soon residents — even restaurants — were emptying out freezers.

“One of the best meals we had was salmon encrusted crab cakes,” Yoes said. “It got pretty interesting after a while.”

As storm veterans, of course, one of the first things they did was get into houses to begin gutting sheetrock — much to the dismay of those affected.

“They didn’t know what we were doing,” Yoes said. “Once we’d go in and show them, we’d push on the sheetrock and show them what was coming out of it — then they’d say, ‘OK. Do it.’ Every journey starts with the first step. And the first step is, you have to gut your house. You have to start fixing your house. You have to do something.”

More than supplies and experience, Yoes brought hope to the embattled law enforcement officers, many of whom remained on duty after losing their own homes to the storm.

“He was heaven-sent to us, that’s for sure,” said Branigan. “They were experts on homes, stripping out the wet stuff. Pat was just a voice of reason, advising people and telling them what needed to be done. They’ll never forget Pat Yoes up here.”

“It brought back a lot of memories,” Yoes said. “And I made some lifelong friendships. After Katrina, we said you can’t understand unless you’ve been through it. Now they’ve been through it. They’re the experts now. Experience makes you the expert.”