GREENFIELD — About a dozen Hancock County fire and rescue workers are headed to the East Coast to provide evacuation support in preparation for Hurricane Florence.
Members of the Buck Creek Township Fire Department mobilized to a secure staging area in central Virginia on Tuesday night as the storm headed for land. Two members of the Sugar Creek Township Fire Department and one member of the Greenfield Fire Territory also deployed to the area with Indiana’s FEMA disaster-response team, Indiana Task Force 1.
The Buck Creek Fire Department was on standby for a few days before receiving the call for assistance around 8 p.m. Tuesday night, said Township Trustee Melvin Branson. Personnel were on the road within an hour, he said.
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Buck Creek Township has provided five advanced life support ambulances along with 10 personnel to central Virginia in a staging area near Bowling Green, Virginia, Chief David Sutherlin said. There, the Buck Creek firefighters will coordinate with local emergency management directors and FEMA reps to assess the needs of affected counties and organize an evacuation plan for residents in the area the storm will hit.
Buck Creek’s mission will focus on reaching patients in hospitals and other facilities in the health networking system who can only be moved by an ambulance, Sutherlin said. They will evacuate them to a secure temporary facility away from the affected area and wait for the storm to pass, he said.
All active first-responders will do another assessment after the storm to determine further steps they’ll need to take in completing relief and recovery missions. The priority right now is getting people to safety, Sutherlin said.
The Buck Creek fire department is a sub-contractor to American Medical Response, the largest private ambulance provider in the nation, Sutherlin said. AMR holds the FEMA contract for ambulance extraction during a national emergency, so Hancock County firefighters and emergency responders are called upon from time to time to assist in national relief efforts, he said.
Personnel on the Buck Creek Fire Department have assisted in four other national disasters in the past; personnel were mobilized to provide assistance for victims of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Harvey, Sutherlin said. The chief said his troops are well-prepared and skilled in rapidly responding to real-world emergencies, no matter where they might be.
“That’s the great thing about us, is that we come with experience,” Sutherlin said.
