Once again we have to take our hat off to our emergency responders, our volunteer firefighters and our county’s paid professionals who were out in the teeth of the storm last week doing what they could to keep us safe.
Thank you, each and every one of you, for all you do, and for all you have done.
With near hurricane force winds and torrential rain downing trees, power lines and structures left and right last week, it’s a miracle nobody was killed or injured.
It is enough that our men and women willingly put themselves in harm’s way serving us, but it is an insult to their heroic efforts that someone couldn’t leave well enough alone and made off with more than 60 orange traffic cones and several emergency barricades, set out to mark dangerous areas.
We can’t quite decide if this rash of thefts was shortsightedness, selfishness, or just plain stupidity.
Whatever it was, someone is sitting on a pile of hunter orange cones and emergency barricades, and for what? What possible civilian use could someone have for these things?
More to the point, someone’s prank or pastime or whatever it was, was downright dangerous. Lincoln County EMA director Tim Pellerin is dead-on when he notes that it would be too easy for an innocent motorist to do themselves harm driving into a washout they don’t see until it’s too late, because somebody lifted a warning cone.
Not only is it dangerous, at $30 a cone, it’s expensive, too. We ask the individuals responsible to leave their ill-gotten gains somewhere where they can be recovered and put back into service before the victimized fire departments have to go out and purchase replacements.
It’s the least they can do.
