WISCONSIN (WTAQ-WLUK) – A group of Wisconsin firefighters are waiting to see if they’ll be deployed to Florida to help with rescue and recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Milton.
They’re part of Task Force 1 — a statewide search and rescue team. Sixteen members returned to Wisconsin over the weekend after working in western North Carolina, following Hurricane Helene.
“Words and pictures can’t even begin to describe the level of devastation they’re seeing down there. Entire communities are gone,” said Lt. Shawn Kneeland with Fond du Lac Fire Rescue.
“The pictures don’t do it justice. It’s those individuals worst day and we’re there to perform a mission,” added Capt. CJ Wedell with the Oshkosh Fire Department.
The two are just a couple of the 16 Wisconsin firefighters, from several different departments across the state, who as part of Wisconsin’s Emergency Management Task Force 1 deployed to North Carolina last week.
As a swiftwater rescue team, their original mission was to help with search and rescue efforts in the western part of the state that was devastated by Hurricane Helene. It turned into much more.
According to Capt. Wedell, “At the point we got down there we were doing searches for missing people, but because of the training WEM has given us, they needed both land and water based searches so we were able to accommodate those searches on land as well.”
For eight days Task Force 1 worked alongside local first responders and other search and rescue groups from across the country.
While some days included work on the water, according to Wedell, “We searched approximately 15 to 17 miles of river on the Pigeon River. So, basically the department we worked with was the Crabtree Fire Department, we searched from their jurisdiction, their fire district all the way up to I-40 near where the collapses were on the interstate.”
Other days Task Force 1 team members found themselves hiking tough, mountainous terrain, trying to reach people who were stranded because the storm washed out roads and bridges, their only way in or out.
“There’s a lot of people that can’t get water, they can’t get food, they can’t get fuel, they don’t have electricity, they don’t have cell service. So, it was pretty much going door to door to check on people and make sure nobody needed any assistance from us,” added Kneeland.
Once their mission was complete, the Wisconsin Task Force 1 team returned home on Saturday. Kneeland said, “The people that we helped was amazing, that was the best part of the mission obviously because you can see direct impact from all the years of training, being ready to go then finally getting down to do our part was amazing.”
And while Northeast Wisconsin might not have to deal with hurricanes and mountain terrain, the lessons learned will help these first responders back in their own communities should any type of emergency happen.
Kneeland said, “Since there’s so many different departments that are on the Task Force, each Task Force member on those individual departments kind of become force multipliers to bring knowledge back and train our own members and be ready to respond to our own state’s emergencies.”
Task Force 1 has been used in Wisconsin. In 2018, it helped to rescue people during flooding in Crawford County. And in 2017, members helped in the search for victims of the Didion mill explosion in Cambria County.
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