Colorado search and rescue task force travels from Florida to North Carolina

Sunday, a search and rescue task force from Colorado traveled from Pinellas County, Florida, to Asheville, North Carolina, to aid in recovery operations following Hurricane Helene.

The Colorado task force is one of 28 FEMA search and rescue teams. Twenty teams have been activated to perform life-saving missions in response to the storm.

“They have been really working hard and morale is still high and will continue to be. They want to work; they want to make a difference,” said Bob Olme of West Metro Fire Rescue, who serves as program manager for Colorado Task Force 1.

The team of 45 Coloradans has now been gone for five days, searching for survivors of Hurricane Helene, which has killed over 100 people as of Monday morning.

The task force includes firefighters from 17 Colorado agencies, including West Metro, North Metro, South Metro, Denver, Aurora, Adams County, Poudre, Greeley and Loveland. Also on the team are civilians who serve as doctors, K9 handlers and structural engineers.

It took two days for them to reach Florida after leaving Wednesday.

“All night Wednesday into Thursday we tried to get to Jacksonville, but the weather was beating us so we turned around and came back to Chattanooga, spent the night,” Olme said. “Helene continued to move, we ended up in Pinellas County and then went to work.”

That work includes combing through destroyed structures and debris piles.

“We systematically go through on a grid search, even though it’s a wide area search, with canines and people and make sure that there’s nobody still entrapped. If there is, we’ll rescue them and also document it so that the local agencies then know that that area is clear,” Olme said.

The goal is to help those local agencies with hurricane recovery.

“We’re trying to take some of the load off and augment with their efforts,” Olme said.

Early Sunday morning, the team traveled to Asheville to help rescue people from devastating flooding in North Carolina.

“There was rain up until this morning. Certainly, that area is very hilly and mountainous,” Olme said. “We anticipate that the water flow will be much different than in the flat where we were in Pinellas County. There could be opportunities for water rescue as well as the wide-area search and then clearing buildings, clearing cars, clearing debris piles.”

Olme likely won’t have communication with the task force for a few days. Floodwaters have left the Asheville area without power or cell service. The team has radio contact with the command post, but it will take a few days to establish other forms of communication.

“The Asheville area is very interesting. There’s no cell service currently, so the Wi-Fi and those kinds of things are out for us,” Olme said.

But Olme knows the team is hard at work.

“As Coloradans, we need to be very proud we can send such a high-performance, highly trained group of people that will help someone else that we will probably never meet or know in their time of need,” Olme said. “Should we need help, we know that people will come help us.”

The task force usually stays for two weeks but may be extended for an additional week.