FREEPORT, The Bahamas — Fairfax County’s Urban Search and Rescue team, VA-TF1/USA-1, has arrived in the Bahama Islands at the request of FEMA and the Bahamian Government.
Fairfax County Volunteer Fire Chief John Morrison spoke with WUSA9 about their mission in the Bahama Islands after the devastation by Hurricane Dorian.
Morrison said that once the team gets word to deploy from either the United States Agency for International Development or the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they gather at their headquarters in Fairfax County to mobilize and gather their equipment so that they can work their way to their point of departure and this time it was Dulles International Airport.
"We came straight in from Dulles to Nassau very early Thursday morning," Morrison said.
"The first thing we did was work with the U.S. Coast Guard to get an aerial reconnaissance flight over the most damaged islands and they were Abaco and Grand Bahama Island to determine where our search and rescue priority needs will be as well as humanitarian needs," Morrison said.
He said the team also has to assess any logistical challenges such as washed out roads and destroyed bridges. In some cases, they had to use U.S. Coast Guard helicopters to put boots on the ground to assess search and rescue needs, as well as a base of operations for the team and the 50,000 pounds of equipment that was brought with them.
"In an Island nation it is very difficult to move between islands in trucks like we can in the domestic United States for any disaster so we have to move by boat, helicopter or aircraft and that is very logistically complicated to move that volume of equipment around but we make it work to get the aide to where it's needed," Morrison said.
The team is always self-sustaining.
"We bring our own food, water and shelter," he said. "We don’t want to be a burden to the local government that is already overwhelmed."
Morrison also said the team has paramedics and doctors that can perform lifesaving operations and stabilize any victims that we may come upon and they work with USAID to evacuate those people to a medical facility
"We will be here as long as the Bahmaian Government needs us and as long as we can provide some value to the response effort," Morrison said.