FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. — Members of the Virginia Task Force 1 rescue team departed early Thursday morning to head to areas hit hard by Hurricane Laura in the South.
The Fairfax County-based squad -- made up of 45 members, two K-9s and plenty of equipment and vehicles -- will primarily help with search and rescue cases as well as assessments of land and water in the damaged areas.
Tracey Reed, who joined Virginia Task Force 1 in 2015, spoke to WUSA over the phone on Thursday as the team headed to the Gulf and waited for official assignments.
"It’s been a major storm so the wind and the water damage, those are probably the two main concerns that we have," she said. "This is the biggest storm that we’ve had this year so there's definitely that concern with the amount of storm and water damage.”
Before being downgraded to a tropical storm on Thursday, Laura made landfall in Louisiana near the border with Texas as a Category 4 hurricane with winds around 150 miles per hour.
For the rescue team members, past experiences with similar storms led to expectations of seeing plenty of downed power lines and other debris.
"We’ve been on multiple hurricane responses: Katrina, Rita, Harvey," Reed said. "Until you get down there, you don’t really know what you’re getting into. Everything is different.”
Maryland Task Force 1, made up of emergency personnel from areas like Prince George's County and Montgomery County, will also be part of the relief response.
Reed said that her team was ready to work long days ahead with little sleep in between. With the scope of the storm damage still unfolding, she said the members were prepared to help in any way they can.
"It’s a great honor to be able to help other people in our country, not just our own community where we serve as firefighters and paramedics but also to travel within the country down to the Gulf Coast," she said. "It’s a huge honor to be a member of the department that gets to travel around the country and around the world helping people.”
Due to the unknown amount of damage, Reed says Virginia Task Force 1 will be in the South until further notice.