Former Lincoln man part of effort to keep hurricane-hit areas going

Hurricane Florence may be done battering the Carolinas, but the havoc it caused lingers.

Chad Pomajzl, who lived in Lincoln for 14 years, now works as a fuel consultant for Foster Fuels.

He talked to us on the phone from their headquarters in Virginia, where he’s coordinating 135 trucks delivering fuel in the hurricane zone.

“When you’re…facing an outage and you’ve got facilities that are on generator, eventually that fuel is going to be depleted and if that fuel runs out, then that facility is going to go down,” Pomajzl said.

He said they deliver emergency fuel to first responders, FEMA, grocery stores, soup kitchens and hospitals.

“There’s just no room for error,” he said.  “Some hospitals have people on life support, so keeping those facilities running is critical.”

He said it hasn’t been easy, with crews trying to get to places inundated by floods.

“I talked to one of my drivers today who was delivering fuel to a grocery store in Havelock, North Carolina,” he said.  “And he delivered fuel there yesterday, but even today, the road that he took yesterday was impassable because the flood waters still continue to rise even today.”

But even so, he said operations are going smoothly.

He said Foster Fuels aren’t strangers to efforts like this.  They also did it after Superstorm Sandy and last year’s hurricanes.