BY BILL GODFREY
Shortly after September 11, 2001, the state of Florida created a number of state-funded urban search and rescue (US&R) teams distributed geographically to provide more depth and timely response to a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) event if one should one occur in Florida. Florida now has nine US&R teams, two federal and seven state teams. As we embarked on this new era, we thought we might see one deployment in five years-maybe. Hurricane deployments didn’t occur to us.
As Katrina approached Louisiana and Mississippi, the members of Central Florida Task Force 4 (TF-4) US&R team members sat with the experience of four hurricanes (Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne) under their belts. Our thoughts and hearts were with the people of Louisiana and Mississippi, but as a state resource we never thought we would be called to deploy that far out of our region. We were wrong.
ACTIVATED AUGUST 29
Central Florida TF-4 USAR team initially received orders to deploy to Mississippi as a Type III US&R team on August 29. Less than 24 hours later, the balance of TF-4 was activated with orders to round up to a Type I US&R team and unite with the initial Type III team (in Mississippi by 1700 hours on August 31). The initial deployment left with the standard US&R Type III equipment cache, but, because of first-hand reports from the team leader already in theatre and TF-4’s experience with hurricanes, we knew we needed far more than just the equipment on the US&R typed list.
THE CHALLENGES OF HURRICANES
Hurricanes are different, especially the big ones (Category 4 and 5). Hurricane destruction has three primary causes: waves of water crashing into things, flooding from storm surge and heavy rain, and wind (including tornadoes). Although hurricane winds certainly cause great damage, the costliest and most severe damage is usually caused by water. In coastal areas, the force of waves crashing ashore can literally take buildings, roadways, and bridges out of existence. Farther inland from the coast, buildings can be lifted intact from their foundations and deposited hundreds of feet away, or they can be reduced to a rubble pile that’s unrecognizable. Still further inland, roofs will be blown off, some wall collapses will occur, and trees and other objects (like vehicles) will be smashed into houses, causing some level of structural collapse.
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Hurricane destruction patterns create some challenges for US&R teams. The big building collapse is not the problem; the problem is there are hundreds or even thousands of small building collapses that are spread over hundreds of square miles. US&R teams are designed to operate in a small area with a base camp established nearby, a painful lesson TF-4 learned during our deployment to the panhandle of Florida for Hurricane Ivan. Transportation, and lots of it, is a must and needs to include four-wheel drive vehicles, off-road vehicles, and all terrain vehicles (ATVs). Some roads will be passable with vehicles, but roadways in coastal areas will be gone or under six to eight feet of sand, the domain of ATVs only.
Roadway signs, landmarks, and roads and bridges will be gone. Maps have limited utility. Even if you’re able to get a street-level map from the local fire department, it will be difficult to use without references. When you’re going into devastated areas and you don’t know your way around, bring moving map GPS systems. Lots of them. Moving map GPS systems are very inexpensive now and should be standard equipment for deployments into unfamiliar areas.
 The presence of a car under this pile of debris was revealed by one of the search dogs. |
Searching for victims in a hurricane-devastated area is more an exercise in accountability and reconnaissance than of searching every debris pile. Unlike other natural and man-made disasters, hurricanes come with warning. Many people evacuate. The art of searching for hurricane victims is really about figuring out who is accounted for and who is missing. Often, homeowners and neighbors are the best source of information about who left before the storm, who was seen after the storm, and who they haven’t heard from or don’t know about. It is a simple but effective way to prioritize search efforts.
JACKSON COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
Central Florida Task Force 4 and Jacksonville (FL) Task Force 5 (also deployed as a Type I) were jointly assigned search responsibility for Jackson County, Mississippi, which is just east of Biloxi on the coast. We were joined by a large law-enforcement contingent from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, the state law enforcement agency responsible for patrolling the Florida waterways. The law enforcement contingent provided security and boats with operators for water-based rescues or operations we might undertake. The joint task force established a base camp of several hundred people and vehicles at Gautier High School just north of Pascagoula, Mississippi (photo 1).
 Gautier High School Base of Operations. (Photos by author.) |
In many ways, we were lucky on the deployment to Mississippi. A considerable number of the personnel in Mississippi were from Florida, and many law enforcement and fire rescue responders knew each other from previous operations. Central Florida TF-4 and Jacksonville TF-5 worked together in the panhandle during Hurricane Ivan a year earlier, and many of the hurricane US&R operational innovations driven by necessity in Hurricane Ivan came from the efforts of the two teams. Familiarity of the teams and previous hurricane response experience enabled the joint task force to operate with a higher level of effectiveness.
JOINT PLANNING AND OPERATIONS
The two teams established a US&R Joint Planning section at the Jackson County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Pascagoula, about 10 miles from base camp. The EOC proved an excellent location, allowing coordination with local agencies, access to maps and local knowledge, and better intelligence. In turn, the Joint Planning section was able to keep the EOC and local officials well informed of our progress, findings, and mission planning. Additionally, the Joint Planning section assisted the EOC with overhead teams and the initial Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) liaison mainly by translating the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and pointing them in the right direction for specific needs and requests.
USAR teams generally deploy with a skeleton planning staff and little equipment for planning, at least on the official equipment list. Another lesson learned from earlier hurricanes is that you should assume that nothing will be working and to bring everything you need. For planning, that means a lot of computer equipment. TF-4 deployed with six laptops, six USB GPS receivers, mapping software, networking gear (wireless routers, hubs, and cabling), satellite phones, a high-speed color laser printer, a host of office supplies, and several reams of specially coated printer paper. Because of the extreme humidity typical after hurricanes, specially coated paper is a must; regular paper becomes so moist it repeatedly jams most printers-an extraordinarily frustrating lesson learned during Ivan.
What we desperately needed and did not have was a satellite data uplink system. Nothing was working-no cell phones, no wireless data, no Internet access, no dial tone. Satellite phones (which must have a clear line of sight to the sky) were sufficient to place calls out of the region, but incoming calls virtually never got through. Handheld phones won’t work inside a building, and vehicle-mounted phones are useless if you’re not in the vehicle. A satellite data uplink would allow an antenna to be placed outside with clear line of sight to the sky and cabling to run inside a building, providing both Internet access and stable telephone service. We requested a system through channels the day we arrived; the equipment arrived the day we left. Next time we’ll bring it with us.
Incident Action Plan
The Joint Planning section benefited from the combined planning resources from both teams; as a result, more was accomplished together than either team could have alone. Missions for the two teams were well coordinated. We used a joint incident action plan (IAP), which detailed assignments for each team; gridded search maps; contained assessments from the preceding day; and included available intelligence, communication procedures, and a medical emergency plan. More than 40 copies of the IAP (some 15 to 20 pages long), as well as a horde of maps, were produced with the printer nightly for the two teams. Additionally, each squad was equipped with a GPS-enabled moving map display on a laptop to find its way around the area.
The IAP segregated mission assignments for TF-4 and TF-5, to make operations easier, eliminate confusion, and maximize the use of resources. The two teams operated quasi-independently in their assigned areas, updating each other on progress during the day. The key to the joint missions and operations was avoiding having the two teams crisscross each other and cover the same area twice, which happened often in the first 48 hours after the hurricane. Some areas were more devastated than others and took considerably more time to clear, so when one team completed an area ahead of schedule, it was assigned to areas the first team had not yet reached. Since both teams were working off the same IAP and using the same gridded search maps, it took only minutes for the team leaders to confer and reallocate assignments without duplication.
US&R teams use a standardized search-marking pattern that is supposed to be spray-painted on the front of each building searched by a team. This procedure is appropriate for some buildings with structural damage from a hurricane, but it is not practical to attempt marking every building in a hurricane-devastated area. For one thing, no one has enough paint. Based on earlier hurricane experience, TF-4 deployed to Mississippi with nearly triple the amount of orange marking paint on the equipment list. We still ran out. An effective, yet unofficial, technique that developed during Hurricane Ivan was to mark the middle of the roadway at the entrance to a small neighborhood or block of homes. Hurricane-damaged buildings frequently involve damage that does not threaten the structural integrity of the building and can thus be cleared quickly. This nonstandard use of the US&R standardized marking provided four significant benefits:
- It was fast and conserved paint;
- it did not anger homeowners whose houses, though damaged, did not need a new paint job;
- it was an easy way for the team squads to recognize whole areas already completed; and
- it was easily visible by helicopter during aerial reconnaissance, an airborne progress report of sorts.
 Street markings from the helicopter recon flight. |
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SOME REVISIONS NEEDED
The book says deploy as a self-sufficient unit for 48 hours, the theoretical time it will take to establish an organized supply line and resupply deployed units. A good amendment for hurricanes should probably say four days (96 hours) with a footnote saying “but be prepared for six days.” Establishing supply lines in a devastated region is a very difficult and challenging job, complicated by widespread rerouting or outright hijacking of shipments, frequently by government entities.
Our base camp was Gautier High School, which was without power, water, or sewer. We ordered portable toilets for base camp on the first day; they never arrived. TF-5 cleverly rigged a generator to power the football team’s field house, which contained bathrooms and showers on a self-contained well and septic system with a lift station. This creativity was important for two reasons: (1) Showering after an operational period was an important part of personnel decontamination; and (2) when regular people are fed nothing but Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) for two days, they become not so regular (digestively speaking).
Food, water, and ice are extremely important to the success of a US&R team on a hurricane deployment. MREs can suffice for the first two days, but problems emerge if they are relied on beyond that point. Simply put, we don’t generally eat MREs, and most people aren’t used to them. About one-third of personnel tend to develop constipation after more than two days of an MRE-only diet; this can turn into yet another problem requiring attention. Energy and morale tend to nosedive on the third day of a deployment, so feeding the troops a hot meal with meat for dinner by the second or third night becomes both an efficiency and a safety concern. More importantly, it’s not hard to do. US&R teams deploying by ground move in convoys of vehicles and semi-trucks. Carrying real food, water, and ice provisions for four days adds one refrigerator truck to a convoy of about 20 other vehicles. The cost of feeding a deployed US&R team is a reimbursable expense, so why not bring it with you from the beginning? You may be wondering if this is really that serious a problem-after all, it’s a hurricane, not a weekend camping trip. TF-4 came perilously close to running out of food and water on days 4 and 5 of the Katrina deployment. Had it not been for TF-5 sharing large amounts of food and water shipped independently by the citizens of Jacksonville supporting the TF-5 team, we would have run out.
Communication, specifically radio communication, is a complicated issue that has generated a lot of attention in recent years. “Frequency spectrum,” “redundancy,” and “interoperability” are but a few of the associated buzzwords. None of that matters when there’s nothing left behind, nothing to even salvage. No one radio tower is going to work over hundreds of square miles. Surely technology has progressed far enough to build a self-contained radio pod that can link itself through a satellite to another pod 20 miles away, creating a self-forming radio net to support communications over a widespread geographic area. Such a system could be useful in many types of large-scale disasters.
It seems urban search and rescue teams have become the state and federal asset of choice for rapid deployment to a hurricane-devastated area to search for and render assistance to victims. But given that reality, it’s time to take a hard look at US&R procedures, staffing, and equipment lists to see if they make sense for geographically widespread disasters such as hurricanes. It may well be time to write a new chapter in the US&R manual for hurricane response.
BILL GODFREY, a 22-year veteran of the fire service, is deputy chief of training and information technology for Orange County (FL) Fire Rescue. He is a paramedic and a certified fire instructor III and has a bachelor’s degree in public administration and a master’s degree in business administration. He has responded to five major hurricanes, including Katrina, within the past two years, with the Central Florida US&R TF-4, for which he is a planning manager.
