A squad of firefighters is holding out hope that they may be called upon to assist with rescue and recovery operations in Florida as Category 5 Hurricane Milton draws closer.
A statewide search and rescue force, Wisconsin Task Force 1 is made up of these firemen.After assisting in western North Carolina during Hurricane Helene, sixteen members made their way back to Wisconsin over the weekend.
The kind of damage they’re witnessing down there is beyond description in words or images. According to Fond du Lac Fire Rescue Lieutenant Shawn Kneeland, entire communities have vanished.
“The pictures don’t do it justice.” Captain CJ Wedell of the Oshkosh Fire Department continued, “It’s those individuals’ worst days and we’re there to perform a mission.”
Just a handful of the people from various departments around the state, including these two, were sent to North Carolina last week as part of Wisconsin’s Emergency Management Task Force 1.
Their original task as a fast water rescue squad was to assist in search and rescue operations in the state’s western region, which had been severely damaged by Hurricane Helene. It became so much more.
As per Capt. Wedell, “At the point we got down there, we were doing searches for missing people, but because of the training WEM has given us, they needed both land and water based searches, so we were able to accommodate those searches on land as well.”
Task Force 1 collaborated with regional first responders and national search and rescue teams for eight days.
Even though work was done on the water on certain days, Wedell said, “We searched approximately 15 to 17 miles of river on the Pigeon River. So, basically the department we worked with was the Crabtree Fire Department. We searched from their jurisdiction, their fire district, all the way up to I-40, near where the collapses were on the interstate.”
On other days, members of Task Force 1 had to hike over difficult hilly terrain in order to reach stranded individuals whose only means of access was due to the storm’s washing away of roads and bridges.
“There’s a lot of people that can’t get water, they can’t get food, they can’t get fuel, they don’t have electricity, they don’t have cell service. So, it was pretty much going door to door to check on people and make sure nobody needed any assistance from us,” Kneeland continued.
After completing their assignment, the Wisconsin Task Force 1 members left for home on Saturday. Kneeland stated, “The people that we helped was amazing. That was the best part of the mission obviously, because you can see direct impact from all the years of training. Being ready to go, then finally getting down to do our part. was amazing.”
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Even though hurricanes and steep terrain are not likely to affect Northeast Wisconsin, the knowledge gained will be useful to first responders in their home towns in the event of an emergency.
Kneeland stated, “Since there’s so many different departments that are on the Task Force, each Task Force member on those individual departments kind of become force multipliers to bring knowledge back and train our own members and be ready to respond to our own state’s emergencies.”
Wisconsin has also made use of Task Force 1. Members assisted in the search for victims of the Didion mill explosion in Cambria County in 2017 and in the rescue of individuals during flooding in Crawford County in 2018.
