Missouri Task Force 1 to head to Texas to assist with water rescues
Ryan Shiner
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Missouri Task Force 1 has been activated by FEMA to assist in rescue operations following catastrophic flooding in Texas’ Guadalupe River. The Boone County Fire Protection District announced the deployment Monday afternoon.
At least 95 people have died in the flooding, according to reporting from CNN. The task force will focus on water rescues and human remains detection efforts.
A 52-member team left BCFPD’s Columbia headquarters around 7:30 p.m. Monday and will head to Kerr County, Texas. Missouri Task Force 1 is expected to be on the ground for up to 14 days.
“While the final destination has not yet been confirmed, the team will support search and rescue operations in response to the historic flooding affecting the region,” the release says.
Assistant Fire Chief Gale Blomenkamp said the team is deploying in a Type 3 configuration with additional personnel.
“There’s several different configurations that we can be deployed as,” Blomenkamp said. “A Type 1, a Type 3, a Type 4 or just a mission ready package. So FEMA requested a Type 3 task force, which is 35 people plus 10 for ground support, makes 45 people deploying. However, on this mission we have added four HRT, human remains detection, K-9 and handlers, and one additional search team manager.”
Blomenkamp said this mission includes an enhanced water rescue component due to the scale of the flooding.
“We’re going down with an enhanced water rescue package. And most of the members that are being deployed are either swift-water and/or boat-operator certified,” he said. “So we have that enhanced capability for water rescue anticipating this being a flooding event. That’s going to be some water. There’s going to be some debris and a lot of wide area search going on.”
Blomenkamp also compared the devastation to what the team experienced during flooding in Kentucky in 2022.
“The extent of damage that we’ve seen on TV, the amount of water that went through that area is really kind of unbelievable,” Blomenkamp told ABC 17 News. “It’s a lot of what we saw in Kentucky last year during those floods, just sheer devastation. So we are we’re prepared for that. We’ve seen it before. But those families down there, they need some closure.”
Preparation for the deployment was fast and detailed. Blomenkamp said the team had just four hours to mobilize after receiving the call. The team packed approximately 100,000 pounds of equipment for the mission.
Missouri Task Force 1 will be joined by Colorado Task Force 1 on Tuesday as recovery efforts continue.