Indiana DNR Officers Back Home From Hurricane-Ravaged North Carolina

JACKSONVILLE -- Indiana's Task Force 1 was not the only group of Hoosiers to help rescue those displaced by Hurricane Florence.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources also sent a crew of 16 river rescue instructors and scuba divers to North Carolina. Lt. Dan Dulin, a conservation officer with the DNR, was one of them.

"This was not like any flooding I had ever seen before," Dulin said. "We've dealth with some flooding in Indiana obviously, but we were in areas that had seen over 20 inches of rain in three days."

The group of Hoosiers were sent to Jacksonville, North Carolina, a port town along the Carolina coastline about an hour north of Wilmington, which is where Indiana's Task Force 1 was stationed.

"We did not work with Task Force 1," said Dulin. "They separated us obviously there was many needs for many swift water rescue personnel, so by separating us we were able to affect more people in a wider area."

Dulin recalls one incident which he said "they will remember for the rest of their life."

"As elderly lady called 911 in the early morning hours," Dulin described. "When we responded to the area, we were the only way in and out of that particular area of Jacksonville."

"We went door-to-door and eventually got to her address. We force our way in through the garage and made our way to the kitchen. That's where we found the lady sitting in chest deep water in her wheel chair with absolutely no way to get out of her house."

Dulin said she and her dog were removed from the house, put in a boat and taken to dry ground. The lady was suffering from hypothermia, but Dulin said she would be okay.

All 16 of the DNR officers returned to Indiana this week.