Wake County EMS workers aid relief efforts in Ocracoke Island

WAKE COUNTY, N.C. (WTVD) -- Some first responders from Wake County are helping out in the Ocracoke Island recovery effort after Hurricane Dorian.

A team of 12 is in Ocracoke Island through Thursday staffing a local fire station and running 911 calls all night.

"We've seen 84 patients," said Jon Olson, deputy director at Wake County EMS. "Some of them were from injuries that happened two days ago that are starting to see some infection and we're starting to see more folks this afternoon that are getting hurt during the cleanup recovery -- most of them have lacerations and twists and so forth."

One of the 12 team members is the associate medical director for Wake County and works in the emergency department at WakeMed.

Olson said there is massive destruction on the island including piles of mattresses, tables and lamps.

"Debris management is going to be a huge party of this recovery," he said. "There are a tremendous number of flooded out vehicles everywhere across this island so mitigating that is going to be a longer term issue for emergency management folks."

Olson said they haven't seen anyone with critical injuries just yet but they're trying to help out as best they can.

"The population of the island continues to go up every day with more and more relief workers coming in so we've seen some injuries in those folks and that's what we anticipate seeing the rest of the week," he said. "That's what we do: we step up to help folks whether it's next door or down the street or across the state."

The team is planning to to stay in Ocracoke until Thursday.