With Hurricane Dean still posing significant threat to South Texas, the Texas Engineering Extension Service, or TEEX, today forward-deployed its resources to two staging areas: San Antonio and Weslaco, which is located in the Rio Grande Valley between McAllen and Brownsville.
A breakdown of Monday's deployment:
San Antonio
TexasTask Force 1
Type-1 urban search and rescue team
70 personnel, heavy rescue and sophisticated search capabilities
TexasTask Force 2
Type-3 urban search and rescue team
28 personnel, medium rescue and search capabilities
Helicopters, boats
33 UH-60 and 13 CH-47 helicopters coordinated by Texas Military Forces
250 boat squads from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Weslaco
TexasTask Force 1
Type-3 urban search and rescue team
28 personnel, medium rescue and search capabilities
TX-TF1 Water Task Force
Wide-Area Flood Model
35 personnel with 6 swift water rescue boat squads
TEEX continues to oversee all search and rescue operations for the state of Texas, coordinating resources from its own Texas Task Force 1 , Dallas-based Texas Task Force 2, Texas Forest Service, General Land Office, Texas Parks & Wildlife, Department of Public Safety, Civil Air Patrol and Texas Military Forces.
Other federal resources ready to assist
Based on the president’s federal disaster declaration, supplemental federal search and response assistance remains on standby. Task forces from California, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee and Utah are among the nation’s urban search and rescue teams ready to deploy to Texas under the coordination of the Texas Engineering Extension Service, should the need arise.
Pet, animal care among training topics
Until further deployment instructions are issued, all task force members are using this time to train on a variety of procedures, such as global positioning systems and communications. Another area of training focuses on animal and pet evacuation needs per the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards (PETS) Act signed into law by the president on Oct. 6, 2006. All task force members undergo this training to address the needs of individuals with household pets and service animals following a major disaster or emergency.
