Pastor Vallo

Posted on by Thor

Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse Nightclub Massacre on June 12, 2016. It may contain sensitive and difficult to read content. Post written with narrator’s consent.  

Pastor Paul Vallo‘s Christ Unity Church, provided immediate response to first responders in the aftermath of the Pulse Nightclub shooting for 11 days in June of 2016.

The church was outgrowing the property they had on Orange Avenue but, when the pulse attack took place and the congregation at Christ Unity had the chance to respond, they felt like it crystalized the reason why they were there. They had a unique ability to respond to a need in the community. The church has always been about community outreach.

On the morning of June 12, 2016, Pastor Vallo was contacted and told that there was a shooting at Pulse but no one knew the extent of the incident. The Pastor, staff and volunteers arrive very early in the morning to the church. Many had trouble getting to the church since the church was behind police lines. Many had to walk on foot to try and get past police lines. There clearly was no way that there could be services that day.

Staff and volunteers gathered, and prayed for the victims. Immediately after prayers they went to the front doors and watched all the first responders who were walking up and down the sweltering street. The church has a cafe, so they took all the food and supplies and they put it out on the street. They stood outside and told people passing by that they should let people know that they had food at the church.  Volunteers worked to get more food and water to the church. The evening of the attack the church held a prayer vigil. The sanctuary was full. For the next 11 days they served first responders around the clock. A christian church needs to show compassion.

The media wasn’t allowed to come in. They wanted the church to be a sanctuary. It was a place where first responders could decompress, get out of the heat, get some good food. Restaurants began to respond and people donated amazing home cooked meals. They had enough to feed hundreds of people.

On woman from Orlando Police Department said she hadn’t slept or eaten anywhere for four days except in the church. Some people did not go to the prayer vigil because they feared the area might not be safe, but the pastor never felt fear. He sensed the anxiety, but they were behind police lines for a week and a half.  The Florida Governor Rick Scott conduced much of his work from inside the church.

Pastor Vallo was interviewed by BBC and CNN. Most of his efforts were focused on meeting the needs of first responders. At a vigil at SODO development next to the church, some people were asking, how do we make sense of this? He responded, You can’t make sense of a mad man. There is no reason, there is no logic. The only thing that could be done was to respond to it, rather than try and figure it out. We can not become the children of the shooter’s hatred. We have to respond with the opposite, with love, kindness and compassion.

A man who lives directly behind the Pulse Nightclub, had not left his home for four days after the shooting. He was having a panic attack in the yard. On the evening of the shooting it was like being in a war zone. Through the blinds he saw people running through the yard screaming covered in blood. Many people on the street hadn’t left their houses. They still were not sure what was going on outside. For weeks afterwards the pastor and others began going door to door doing wellness checks. If people needed medicine or food they helped find the resources. Some had no other need other than to talk about it.

DEO Jalopy

Posted on by Thor

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the online Florida Unemployment system known as Connect as an old Jalopy in the Datona 500. As politicians do, he blamed his predecessor Rick Scott for the failings of the system. Florida has had more than 3.48 million unemployment applications filed since mid-March. Only California had more first-time claims.

The Orlando Weekly reported that the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) distributed $13 billion in state and federal assistance to 1.8 million unemployment claimants. The bulk of the money came from a $600-a-week federal unemployment benefit, which expired at the end of July. Connect was designed by the previous Governor Rick Scott and it could not handle the massive number of unemployment claims that began pouring in after the pandemic hit the state in March. The system, which cost nearly $78 million dollars to design was put in place in 2013.

The firm hired to design the site, Deloitte Consulting, got the job by offering the lowest bid. The firm has just on another bid to handle the states Medicaid data. In an interview Monday with Miami television reporter Jim DeFede, DeSantis said, “I mean having studied how it was internally constructed,” DeSantis said, “I think the goal was for whoever designed, it was, ‘Let’s put as many kind of pointless roadblocks along the way, so people just say, oh, the hell with it, I’m not going to do that.” The DeSantis administration was left having to fix a system that could not keep up with demand in the middle of economic shutdown caused by the COVID-19. The state has spent more than $120 million in contracts to prop up the flawed unemployment process during the pandemic.

So, is the DEO Connect site now working? Of course not. Representative Anna Eskamani reported that, “The DEO is aware that a LOT of people are missing both back pay and their $600 payments. DEO has made this issue a priority to address and assures us that money is being released daily. In July the CONNECT system did finally provide a way to at least track $600 FPUC payments.”

For many people who apply for benefits, the online nightmare feels like a full time job. Many feel they are being denied wrongly. Those that are denied are given no reason. DeSantis said that people should not have to keep re logging into the broken system to certify their weeks in order to get paid, but his administration followed up with exactly the opposite information. The Governor ordered work search requirement suspended but people were being denied for not meeting those requirements. FOX 13 Tampa reporter Craig Patrick pointed out that call center questions are seldom answered and responses run in circles. The whole system seems designed to be sure applicants get frustrated and leave in frustration.

Wesh 2 News reported a DEO response, “We are asking Floridians to be patient as we take action to increase our ability to serve those whose employment has been negatively impacted by the mitigation efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19.”

Starting July 25, 2020 those $600 payments, going to about 25 million Americans, will stop, which could cause a flood of evictions as people can no longer pay rent. Law makers in Washington have not been able to come to an agreement about what can be done. The system is a wreck.

Terry DiCarlo

Posted on by Thor

 This post discusses the shooting that took place at the Pulse
Nightclub on June 12, 2016. It contains difficult content, so please do
not read on if you feel you may be effected. 

This article and sketch have been posted with the express written
permission of the interviewees. Analog Artist Digital World takes the
privacy and wishes of individuals very seriously. 

Terry DiCarlo had been in the HIV diagnosis business for over 30 years. He was the director at The Center at the time of the Pulse shooting. The Center is the largest tester for HIV in Florida. They do 500 to 600 tests a month for HIV.  Orlando is fifth in the nation for the most newly diagnosed cases. Just before the shooting Terry had been offered a Director’s position at AIDs Health Foundation (AHF) which is a Los Angeles based global nonprofit provider of HIV prevention services, testing, and
healthcare for HIV patients. AHF currently claims to provide medical
care and services to more than 1 million individuals in 43 countries
worldwide. He was offered twice the salary that he was making at the Center. His start date was to be August 1, 2016 and July 16th was going to be his last day at the center. All the paperwork was done. He was packing up his office and then June 12 happened, the day of the Pulse massacre. AHF pushed off his start date to September but by mid August he realized in his heart would not let him leave Orlando.

There were between 300 and 600 people working in the tiny space
inside the Center. It got hot in there in with the smoldering June heat.
Someone donated several large mobile air conditioners to help. With the back
doors always open taking in donations, the heat kept flowing in. On the third day after the shooting that took 49 lives, Terry decided he had to close the Center at 6pm. Had he kept the Center open 24 yours, the volunteers would have stayed for 24 hours. They had been working 12 to 14 your days for three days straight. They were ordered to go home and rest. Terry started turning off lights to shut the Center down.

At 5:45pm he got a call, letting him know that Florida Governor Rick Scott was planning to visit and wanted to enter by the back door so as not to draw attention. All the lights went back on. The governor banned all press and anyone in the Center would have to turn off their cell phones. Terry grew angry. His Orlando community had just been hurt, and this as their house. He called every news station and let them know that they had 5-10 minutes to get to the Center. The news trucks were all close by.

Three black SUVs pulled up behind the Center. The governor and his entourage entered via the back door and the press poured in the front door. The governor was shocked, but put on a plastic smile. Then Terry invited everyone in the Center to take out their cell phones of a photo op. This was supposed to be a private photo op for the governor since he had his personal photographer in tow. It was a chance for him to brag that he had been to the Center and the photo would imply that he cared. It was all self serving PR.

He never said the word LGBT. He never said “I’m sorry for what you are going through.” He looked at Bill, Terry’s husband, who had a tattoo and asked, “Did that hurt?” Bill responded, “Is that really all you have to say?” The governor shook Bills hand who wiped his hand off on his pants as the governor walked away. He seemed to have no idea what the Center was or why there were 600 people there. He asked nothing about all the donations or where they were going.

Down at Pulse, Marco Rubio showed up and started talking to the media about The danger of Islam, terrorists and hate. He was spewing false information. Terry shouted out that this wasn’t about hate and division. All the cameras turned towards him. He always spoke from the heart. He tended to stand on the side lines while Patty Sheehan, Mayor Buddy Dyer and Police Chief Mina walked to and from the Command Center for updates. Then while they stood talking to media Chief Mina signaled to Terry that he should join them to help relay information to the world. This would become his role in the months and years to follow. One New York Times reporter had Terry’s name on file with the initials GTG beside his name. That meant “go to gay.” Terry would always offer honest opinions when asked.

The Angel Action Wings were created at the Shakespeare Theater with the help of Jim Helsinger. They were donated to the Center after Terry explained that they would be respected and used at proper events to honor the 49 lives lost. No one ever sees the angels getting ready. When they appear at Pulse, the fire station down the street lets them get set up in the parking lot behind the station. When they appear at Lake Eola, a condo association across the street allows them to get ready in the ballroom. Bill created an 8 foot high PVC pole that held several white flags. This helps in letting people know that the angels are coming and it helps part the crowd. The angels were originally intended to protect against hate and now they have become a signal of hope and of love. People just come up to the angels and hug them.

In time, Terry had to step down from being the director at the Center, taking a communications director position instead. In the months after Pulse he was pulled in so many directions, that something had to give. He has talked to survivors who are going through a lot. For the first year, survivors were being flown around the world to Pride events and fundraisers. After one year that attention disappeared. They felt lost. One survivor, a nurse said she can not get a job. At interviews she holds back not wanting anyone to know she was at Pulse that night. She suspects she might be sabotaging herself.

The current administration is promoting hate and division and that trickles down. The love and unity we experienced is being torn apart. People seem unable to see through the smoke screen. We can not let people forget. Orlando stood as one, united in not letting hate win. Orlando reacted with love and the world saw that and stood beside us. For a few days, hate stood still.

On January 27, 2020, Terry DiCarlo died of Cancer at the age of 57.

Call Responders Audrey Davidson and Evalyn Casper

Posted on by Thor

This post discusses the shooting that took place at the Pulse
Nightclub on June 12, 2016. It contains difficult content, so please do
not read on if you feel you may be effected. 

This article and sketch have been posted with the express written
permission of the interviewees. Analog Artist Digital World takes the
privacy and wishes of individuals very seriously. 

Audrey Davidson stated that, training to become a 911 operator took five weeks followed with on the floor training for three months. Over 1000 hours of training were involved. She was a 911 operator when Pulse happened. Evalyn Casper used to watch Rescue 911 as a child religiously so growing up she thought 911 operators were pretty cool. She knew someone at the sheriffs office and they suggested she apply. Milestones in her career always seem to surrounded big events. She was hired at the sheriffs office on September 11, 2002 one year after the attack on the World Trade Center. She liked that this job allowed her to really apply herself and work her way up. All the training was offered on a platter. She was hungry for everything taking every course offered. She started training others. On June 12, 2017 she was promoted as supervisor on year after the Pulse shooting.

Being a 911operator is a stressful job. The highest stress comes when operators are inundated with a high volume of calls.  Everyone has cell phones now, so that even a back up on I-4 can generate a huge number of calls that can shut them down. An operator is supposed to systematically treat each call the same. When there are so many calls rolling it it becomes difficult. Even if you had 300 calls about the same incident you still have to process it like it is a new call. The next call might be the one that saves a life.

The day before Pulse they worked a similar overnight shift from about, 6:30pm to 6:30am. Evalyn was training a guy, it was his third day, so she was on the 911 desk. She let her trainee know that Saturday nights can get a little crazy. She advised her trainee that if things got fast paced she would move him over so she could process the calls faster. Everyone has a cell phone, and everybody is a witness so they could get flooded with calls. Most calls are verbal arguments and batteries.

Typically with a shooting there is a spurt of calls and usually the police are there within minutes. People see the lights and sirens and the calls stop. Most who call haven’t seen the incident as it happened. A 911 Operators questioning is very limited. First get the address, get the suspect description, see if the suspect is still there. The police make sure the scene is clear for fire and rescue to come in.

Audrey said that on June 12, 2016, the phones were ringing off the hook.  The fist call she got was from a guy that said, “There was a shooting at Pulse.” Pulse is not in Orange County Sheriff‘s jurisdiction, it is in Orlando Police Department‘s jurisdiction. So she transferred him over to Orlando Police. While she was waiting for Orlando Police to pick up, she thought to herself, “Pulse is a really weird place for a shooting. Pulse is just not the kind of place where a shooting would happen.” The call rang back into their com center. When OPDs phones get overwhelmed their calls all roll over to the Sheriffs call center. Their lines were overwhelmed so calls sent to them just bounced back with other another Sheriff’s operator picking up. The first time she realized it was an active shooter was when a supervisor stood up and told everyone, “There is an active shooter at Pulse.” Information needed to be picked up for every call, then move on to the next call. All the calls blurred together, “Do you have any information you can tell us? Can you tell where he is? Can you tell me what he looks like? If they said, no, the caller would be told that Sheriffs were on the way and the operator had to move on to the next call.

One call stood out for Audrey.  A woman was calling from a 7-11 in the heart of OPD jurisdiction. She was calling about a man who was drunk outside of her store. Obviously the operators had bigger problems at the time. Her information was gathered, what he looked like what he was doing. Audrey had to inform her that they were responding to a very large scale incident at the time. She told the woman to lock the door if he was outside. The very next call was from someone inside the bathroom at Pulse. Operators were informed to collect information and then hang up the phone, but she couldn’t hang up the phone on someone who was dying in a bathroom. He was someone she could have known. That could have been her, she had been to that nightclub. While talking to him, she started crying. She told him, “I’m sorry this happened to you.” She just wanted him to know that someone cared about what happened to him. She couldn’t get his name because he was whispering and the shooter was in the bathroom. It was hard. She stayed on the phone until it went silent. The call was maybe a couple off minutes but it felt like an eternity.

911 operators talk to people all the time who are very hysterical and have been in horrible situations, who have been shot, but the reality is they never speak to someone who is dying. Usually it is other people calling in. That call from the Pulse bathroom was difficult. She is glad she got a chance to let him know she cared. But it was the worst day of her life. It was the worst day for many people. It was hard.  Many family members were calling in wanting to know about their loved ones. A list was started of family names and phone numbers so families could be contacted if needed.  But they still didn’t know how many people were in the nightclub. About 4am the calls started dying off. On a short break, Evelyn called some friends to make sure they were OK. On the beak it all seemed surreal. It was so big, it was hard to process what had just happened. They were still in this limbo of not knowing the official count. They had to go back to their desks and start taking other calls until the shift was over at 6am.

Evalyn remembered that for two solid hours, no one took a break. There are 15 lines. Nobody got off the phones, no one broke down and left. It was upsetting, but everyone kept processing the calls. Usually when an operator takes a difficult call they can walk off the floor for a bit and regain their composure, but there just wasn’t time. All the calls were coming from a particular cell tower on Esther Street. So they all knew that all the calls were related. Evalyn took over for her trainee. The first call was from Duncan Donuts, They claimed that a shot came through their glass or they were hearing shooting. That call was transferred to OPD. All the circuits were busy. The next call was a mom, who was hysterical, wanting to know where her son was. She could not help her. She just wanted to stay on the phone and cry, but she couldn’t. The next call was a guy hiding in a closet inside Pulse, he kept saying, “Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?”  The guy Evalyn was speaking to was whispering. He was in
the upstairs closet. She told him “Just stay were you are. Don’t move,
don’t move, don’t move.” What else could she tell him? There is no
script.

Many were worried it would take some time to get inside. In reality compared to normal it took them very little time. Afterwards they found out what happened. At the time they didn’t have any information to give people. All they could say was, “We are there, we are coming, we are going to help you.” There had never been a active shooter in Orlando on that scale.  There is no protocol. Hang ups were not called back which they usually do. There were too many calls. They had to change their gears and triage things themselves. 400 hours of training stipulate that operators should stay on a call in an emergency situation until deputies arrive and are with the caller. But no call that night could be completed in that way. That left operators having to hang up the phone.

While Audrey cried, Evalyn remembered shaking uncontrollably. The adrenaline was running through her. She tried to make herself stop shaking but that made it worse. Despite this, she kept typing, and talking. She was on auto pilot. After their shift was over they had a debriefing. The critical incident stress management team came in and everyone talked about what just happened. It was quiet and surreal. Everyone felt numb. They stressed that it was alright open up to the feelings that would come. They shouldn’t mask anything or hide anything. There were people crying. Management also advised them to not watch the news.

When Evalyn got home she texted her mom who was asleep. “You are going to see something on the news, we worked this call, we are OK.” Around 7am they fell asleep. When they got up the next day for the next shift, they found out that a
lot more people than they thought had been killed in the club. Evalyn woke up to about 27 missed calls. They didn’t go in to work the next day. They started seeing just how many people had been shot and the reality sank in. They were angry.

They went to the vigil at Dr Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. It felt good to be out in the community. It was somber, but also it was good to see that everyone was together. There was a feeling of collective support. The shooting directly affected everyone in that we are all Orange County citizens, not everyone was from the LGBT community but they were still there. Muslims, Hispanics, Pastors, all gathered together. It seemed that everyone came and converged into Orlando from other parts of the country. Then the church bells rang 49 times. That was brutal. That was probably the worst feeling listening to that. They went back to work the following Thursday still feeling a bit angry.

There was a lot of pomp and circumstance. It was like a circus. Many wanted to reach out and congratulate them, thank them for their service. Politician, Rick Scott, went to their com center walking around while they were taking calls. Audrey couldn’t shake his hand, she was so mad. There was no sense of normalcy. For the longest time they were getting recognition. It felt like they were getting too much attention. While they shook Rick Scott’s hand, HR was telling them that they would have to have therapy. They were required to go to 3 sessions of therapy with a psychologist. Its not just about the trauma of the shooting but everything else bubbled to the surface. They gave different ways of coping, like grounding yourself. Mainly they said, “Don’t beat yourself up for feeling the way you do.”

At the one year remembrance at Lake Eola, they got to hug the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They saw the Mural that was painted. They sang and then the angels came out and then they announced the names again. It was cool to see the families cheering when their loved one’s name was called. They recently stopped by the Pulse temporary memorial and walked around. They cried when they saw the breech in the wall, from the swat team, it was surreal to see how they it was showcased. It suggested that this how lives were saved but this is also how it all ended.