The top story on Midday Edition, Irma is a tropical storm but still packing a punch as it heads to Georgia and the Carolinas. It has left massive helper outages in poor. Urban search and rescue teams including the 81 first responders from San Diego are in Florida to help with the recovery. Even though some of the members a San Diego task force team just returned from helping hurricane Hardy victims. Joining me is Chris comedy assistant chief responsible for fire rescue operations with the San Diego fire rescue Department. And chief, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. What can you tell us about the urban search and rescue team? Where are they now? What will they do this week ? They are staged in Florida. They are waiting for the storm to work its way through. Then most likely, they will be given an area to go and work out of. The team is capable of supporting itself completely unsupported as far as food and water and shelter. They bring that with them. They can work for a week or more without any help. They can move into an area and they have the equipment they need to survive and they bring the water rescue equipment, heavy rescue equipment and to experts to the same. Where is this team being staged? Where are they in Florida ? They are in an Air Force base in the north part of Florida. It is the Elgin Air Force Base. They are hanging out and waiting for the storm to pass over them and then they will be deployed behind the storm. That is in and the Panhandle of Florida. Some of them just got back from Texas in the wake up hurricane Harvey. How many of the team had that quick turnaround I would say a third of the people. We try to rotate people as much as possible. They really only had -- the logistics people had you know, a 12 hour rest before they were back on the road and heading out. The remainder of the team waited a couple of days and flew out and left ahead of the storm. How do you see the need in Florida as different from what was going on in Texas ? Florida gets hurricanes a lot. They get hit a lot. The topography is well-suited for the water to come in and then it will drain off quite quickly. The main mission that they will do will be searching areas mostly for trapped people and doing damage assessments and that type of thing. The rescue part will be fast and furious at the end of the storm but they will quickly going into mapping areas and clearing areas of trapped people and identifying hazards and those types of things to get that mapping recovery effort up and runnin Chief Weber, the team was in position this weekend when the storm hit. That was not the case when they had to be deployed to Texas. How does that change what they can do or how they can do it ? That gives them more time to study the area that they are going into. They are going into a strange area. Most of our area are -- our people are not familiar with Florida. They can study the hazards that they will come across. It makes them better prepared. They are very good at spontaneously responding when they are traveling by road, they get a call and they are on the road within four hours. Doing everything on the road is what they are good at but you know, anything -- anytime you are doing something where you have more time to repair, it helps to be in a position to do something quicker and you are right there and ready to go to work as opposed to having to travel and showing up in a day or two after the event. It has been major wildfire season in the northern part of the state. How is the determination made that the firefighter teams can be sent out of state ? The system was built on the back of the fire neutral aid response system. What we do in California and what we have done for years as far as responding back and forth two big fires and helping each other out almost seamlessly, that is what the FEMA system modeled the system after to where you can go to places and pull people that are not affected by the hazard that they are trained to deal with. They can use them and pay for them at some point and then it is our term, we have a big system that supports us. We do it in California so seamlessly that you do not realize is it happen. You hear reports that there is 500 firefighters on the scene. Those are pulled from the state. When you think task force eight will be home ? I am guessing they will get at least a good week's worth of work. At this point, we are anticipating that they will be tasked with a mission sometime late tonight or first thing tomorrow morning. They will have a good week worth of work while they clear areas and dealing with lighting and infrastructure damage and power lines and that type of thing makes it slow to move around but they should make good time and assessing the damage and making sure that anybody that needs to be rescued or evacuated is taken care of. It is at least a week and possibly 2. I have been speaking with Chris Weber, the chief responsible for fire rescue Department operations with the San Diego fire and rescue Department. Take you very much. Thank you for the time and for having me on.
UPDATE: 10:00 a.m., Sept. 11, 2017
Many of the members of a San Diego-based Urban Search and Rescue Team that just returned from storm-ravaged Houston are now in Florida, where Hurricane Irma has made landfall and remains a Category 1 hurricane over the northwest portion of the state.
Eighty-one members of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue California Task Force 8, based in San Diego, are stationed at Eglin Air Force base, on the western end of the Florida panhandle. Part of the team arrived Saturday night on commercial flights and the rest were anticipated to arrive Sunday night in a truck convoy, the San Diego Fire Department posted Monday morning on Facebook.
The team just returned to San Diego on Thursday after spending six days in the Houston area performing searches, providing medical aid and evaluating damaged structures.
"They train year round and maintain a high level of readiness in order to respond wherever their unique training and skills are needed," said Brian Fennessy, chief of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, which contributed 24 members. "It's important to note that their time at home may be short-lived."
RELATED: San Diego Rescue Team To Return From Texas After Helping Harvey Victims
Fire Department spokeswoman Monica Munoz told City News Service that the Florida team will include a mix of those who went to Houston with some new members. The team can draw from a pool of 210 firefighters from 21 agencies and organizations in the county, she said.
Irma made landfall twice in Florida Sunday and hit the Florida Keys as a Category 4 storm. The hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm Monday morning, after knocking out power to six millions Floridians. As of Monday morning, at least four deaths were reported in Florida and at least 27 across the Caribbean.
Around 45 Red Cross workers from San Diego and Imperial counties are deployed across Texas, Louisiana, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands, chapter spokeswoman Emily Cox said.
"Some of the people who have been in Texas and Louisiana are coming up on two weeks on the ground, so they will be brought home and new people will go to replace them," Cox told City News Service. "We also are going to be sending more to Florida over the weekend and next week."
More than 100 local Red Cross volunteers will probably be deployed over the course of the recovery, she said.
