In the story book fable, Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, Toto and her friends walk down a path filled with many frightening animals including Lions, Tigers and Bears, wondering which one of them could do the most harm or be the one to end it all. In today's world of first responders with emphasis on law enforcement, Mother Nature, not the evil little old man behind the wizard machine, has been our worst fear. Just last week, over 40 tornadoes hit the mid-west with over 70 more unconfirmed yet deadly storms that wreaked havoc in the southeast. It never fails that when you see the overhead news footage from helicopters the day or two after, we almost always see a number of police cars blocking roads that are too dangerous to pass because of downed power lines, major flooding or in some cases, the road is gone due to a tornado, hurricane, earthquake or wildfire.

One of the greatest aspects of law enforcement is the willingness of agencies and their sworn members to respond to the call for help from their fellow members. When the call goes out for "officer needs help", it's an awesome sight to see the overwhelming response from available local, state and federal agencies and personnel to that call. Agencies you may have never heard of come out to assist in addition to federal agents and investigative services who may not typically roll code 3 to calls do so in a heartbeat, not knowing anymore than that a fellow member of law enforcement has asked for help. It's a lesson not only many other government agencies could well learn from but so could leaders of law enforcement when it comes to accepting and utilizing civilian volunteers to assist with the onslaught of natural disasters that seem to be coming more and more often across our nation.

One percent helping ninety nine percent.

When it comes to responding to natural disasters in hard hit areas, it's almost mind numbing to think that on average, only about one percent of the nations population are full time first responders, which include police, deputies, firefighters and EMS personnel. On any given day, these one-percenters have the awesome responsibility of responding to the various needs of our citizens call for help, whether it be police responding to a crime in progress, firefighters responding to structure fires or our EMS personnel providing onsite life saving tasks. Now take that average and turn it upside down completely when your city, town or county, is hit by a natural disaster such as a hurricane, tornado, etc. and suddenly all your citizens are calling for help at the same time. Needless to say, the odds our stack greatly against our nations first responders when this happens as it becomes the very few one-percenters trying to help 99 percent of their local population or at best case, a number less than 99 percent but still very high.