Florida Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 3 returned Monday after a mission that included documenting storm damage and checking road conditions in Jefferson County, according to Tampa Fire Rescue Capt. Brandon Buchanan.<\/p>\n
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The task force brought 75 members from Tampa Fire Rescue, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue and St. Petersburg Fire Rescue, along with four canine handlers. They arrived Thursday, a day before the hurricane made landfall.<\/p>\n
Isaias came ashore Friday near Destin as a Category 2 hurricane, damaging roofs across the Panhandle. Nearly 900,000 customers lost power in the first hours after landfall, mostly in Florida and Alabama, according to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Buchanan said a smaller group moved closer to the expected landfall area to prepare for emergency operations. Most of the team staged at Tallahassee State College, ready to respond to damage farther east.<\/p>\n
After the storm, the team received its assignment in Jefferson County.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bulk of what we did is capture data for the state of damage assessments, roads open,\u201d Buchanan said.<\/p>\n
Those findings help state officials identify needs and direct resources. When crews encounter someone needing assistance, Buchanan said, they log that information so officials can assign a team to follow up.<\/p>\n
The work also helped Jefferson County transition into recovery, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat county was able to then turn over to get to recovery, and we were able to accomplish that for them,\u201d Buchanan said.<\/p>\n
About 30% of the members were on their first deployment. Buchanan said the assignment gave them an opportunity to apply their training and understand how their work fits into the broader disaster response.<\/p>\n
Members train for structural collapse, water rescue, rope rescue and confined-space operations, allowing them to handle a range of emergencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never want to see the damage that comes with it,\u201d Buchanan said. \u201cBut it’s a fact of life in Florida, so we’re kind of trained up to be the first ones there to kind of help get them back on their feet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 75-member team helped assess damage in Jefferson County, providing information to guide assistance and recovery. TAMPA, Fla.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-428131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}