Kansas Task Force 1 deploys to Texas to assist with flood relief
'So they're preparing for more flooding in that same area where they've already been hit,' said Lance Feyh, Kansas State Fire Marshal Public Information Manager.
Fifteen personnel from seven agencies are involved in this deployment.
'I want to thank those agencies because they're sending personnel from their departments to go down and represent the state of Kansas and perform these duties,' Feyh explained.
Bystander saves child from deadly Cameron housefire: Police
Participating agencies include the Kansas State Fire Marshal, the Olathe Fire Department, the Kansas City, Kansas Fire Department and the Shawnee Fire Department.
'We're very fortunate that we have the equipment and the personnel and the training to provide assistance not just to our community in the metro region, but also to help those in other parts of the country that need assistance,' said Battalion Chief Kiel Mason with the Olathe Fire Department.
Texas sent an Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) request to the Kansas Division of Emergency Management. An EMAC is a mutual aid agreement that facilitates assistance in response and recovery operations during a disaster.
KS-TF1 consists of two Type 3 swift-water search and rescue teams, equipped with hard-bottom inflatable boats. The teams will conduct search and rescue operations. Their objectives will be to search for and rescue people, provide basic life support (BLS) medical care, transport people and animals to the nearest location for secondary air or land transport, among other efforts.
'So those individuals work for their fire departments full time. But our (State Fire Marshal) emergency response division has a search and rescue unit that is tasked with providing training for all different types of scenarios for these individuals,' Feyh explained.
Agencies that participate in KS-TF1 also conduct their own training throughout the year.
'They'll do swift water training, go out on the lakes, go out on the reservoirs, go out onto the rivers and practice training, using the boats,' Feyh explained.
'So it's a constant thing that's happening with their training to stay on top of and be in the best potential place to utilize the services we offer.'
Mason says Olathe FD's Special Operations group trains annually and works with partners in the KC metro.
Missouri House bill ignites debate on reducing limitations
'We do train annually on boat operations, surface water operations, swift water operations, and technical search operations,' Mason explained.
'We have five boats that we have here at the Olathe Fire Department. So we're able to supplement resource needs through the state of Kansas, but also have equipment here available at home if it is needed to support the metro region or even here in the city of Olathe.'
Kansas Task Force 1 will start its search and rescue efforts in Kerrville on Monday morning.
KS-TF1's deployment is expected to last two weeks, but that timeline could shift depending on needs.
'The flooding that was already there is still there. The damage and debris are now going to be shifted around again. So, there will be multiple debris floating around that you have to watch out for. It's a treacherous, dangerous thing, but they're prepared to perform life safety if they need to, and help transport people and get them to safe ground,' Feyh explained.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Kansas Task Force 1 deploys to Texas to assist with flood relief
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas Task Force 1 deployed to Kerrville, Texas, on Saturday to assist with the disaster caused by flooding and heavy rains. 'So they're preparing for more flooding in that same area where they've already been hit,' said Lance Feyh, Kansas State Fire Marshal Public Information Manager. Fifteen personnel from seven agencies are involved in this deployment. 'I want to thank those agencies because they're sending personnel from their departments to go down and represent the state of Kansas and perform these duties,' Feyh explained. Bystander saves child from deadly Cameron housefire: Police Participating agencies include the Kansas State Fire Marshal, the Olathe Fire Department, the Kansas City, Kansas Fire Department and the Shawnee Fire Department. 'We're very fortunate that we have the equipment and the personnel and the training to provide assistance not just to our community in the metro region, but also to help those in other parts of the country that need assistance,' said Battalion Chief Kiel Mason with the Olathe Fire Department. Texas sent an Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) request to the Kansas Division of Emergency Management. An EMAC is a mutual aid agreement that facilitates assistance in response and recovery operations during a disaster. KS-TF1 consists of two Type 3 swift-water search and rescue teams, equipped with hard-bottom inflatable boats. The teams will conduct search and rescue operations. Their objectives will be to search for and rescue people, provide basic life support (BLS) medical care, transport people and animals to the nearest location for secondary air or land transport, among other efforts. 'So those individuals work for their fire departments full time. But our (State Fire Marshal) emergency response division has a search and rescue unit that is tasked with providing training for all different types of scenarios for these individuals,' Feyh explained. Agencies that participate in KS-TF1 also conduct their own training throughout the year. 'They'll do swift water training, go out on the lakes, go out on the reservoirs, go out onto the rivers and practice training, using the boats,' Feyh explained. 'So it's a constant thing that's happening with their training to stay on top of and be in the best potential place to utilize the services we offer.' Mason says Olathe FD's Special Operations group trains annually and works with partners in the KC metro. Missouri House bill ignites debate on reducing limitations 'We do train annually on boat operations, surface water operations, swift water operations, and technical search operations,' Mason explained. 'We have five boats that we have here at the Olathe Fire Department. So we're able to supplement resource needs through the state of Kansas, but also have equipment here available at home if it is needed to support the metro region or even here in the city of Olathe.' Kansas Task Force 1 will start its search and rescue efforts in Kerrville on Monday morning. KS-TF1's deployment is expected to last two weeks, but that timeline could shift depending on needs. 'The flooding that was already there is still there. The damage and debris are now going to be shifted around again. So, there will be multiple debris floating around that you have to watch out for. It's a treacherous, dangerous thing, but they're prepared to perform life safety if they need to, and help transport people and get them to safe ground,' Feyh explained. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Chicago Tribune
4 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago-area officials are bracing as summer storms roll in following Texas tragedy and weather service budget cuts
When more than a month's worth of rain fell in 90 minutes just west of the United Center late Tuesday night, federal weather forecasters warned of possible flash flooding, triggering a chain of events that alerted some Chicago residents about potential danger. Among them was Sandra Mason, 55, who lives in a ground-floor apartment on the Near West Side. After receiving an alert on her phone at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Mason began lining her back door with blankets to stop any water from seeping in. Just a few blocks east, the National Weather Service recorded 5 inches of rain falling in an hour and a half, as a thunderstorm stalled over downtown and nearby neighborhoods. The torrent inundated basements, flooded viaducts and closed expressway lanes. Emergency responders rescued stranded motorists. During the evening of July 8, 2025, a stationary thunderstorm produced a very localized area of 2 to 5"+ of rain. At one station, 5.14" of rain fell in just 90 minutes! Such torrential rain rates led to flooded viaducts, water rescues, and basements in the impacted area. #ILwx — NWS Chicago (@NWSChicago) July 9, 2025Previous storms have flooded Mason's building, damaging appliances and furniture, but this time she was mostly spared. Still, she said she was grateful for the federal weather agency alerts. 'You don't know if your house is going to flood,' Mason said. 'You just don't know, you just have to be on your toes.' Weather-related anxiety is high across the country following flash floods in central Texas that killed at least 120 people over the Fourth of July weekend. One of the central concerns is whether Trump administration cuts to the National Weather Service — the backbone of the country's weather warning system — will hamper local governments and residents from staving off disaster when severe weather strikes. The Trump administration this spring eliminated nearly 600 National Weather Service jobs across the country through early retirement, the firing of probationary employees and a hiring freeze across the federal government. It has since made an exception to its hiring freeze and started filling more than 100 weather service vacancies. So far, the Chicago area has felt less of an impact from those staffing reductions than other regions, particularly less-populated areas served by weather service offices in the Quad Cities and downstate Lincoln, 30 miles northeast of Springfield. But Trump's budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts in October, calls for further cuts at other agencies within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including the elimination of research centers that study climate. While Chicago has so far been spared, Illinois Democrats in Washington, D.C., remain critical of the cuts and note that any trims to weather service offices downstate will have an impact on Illinois residents. The office in Lincoln, which serves much of central Illinois, doesn't have a technician to fix radars on other equipment, meaning it has to bring somebody in from another office if something breaks, said U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, who worked as a physicist at Fermilab before joining Congress. 'It hasn't broken yet, but (scientists in the Chicago office are) having to do heroic work, and frankly they're wasting a lot of money because of the DOGE cuts in particular,' Foster, a Naperville Democrat, said about the Trump administration team formerly led by Elon Musk that tried to eliminate thousands of federal jobs earlier this year. 'They're coming under great stress, but I'm very proud of the fact that, at least so far, they haven't dropped the ball in Chicago.' Other offices covering Illinois have been harder hit. The Davenport, Iowa, office that covers northwest Illinois saw a 42% reduction in staffing as of June, and its top two positions were vacant. 'That's not OK, since this stuff has to be available in emergencies, right?' Foster said, noting some people in Naperville escaped a 2021 tornado with just minutes of warning. 'What you're seeing is sort of a thinning out of the capabilities you'll need in an emergency with no disasters yet.' U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who sits on the committee that oversees the National Weather Service, said 'any cuts to Illinois's two NWS offices (in future federal budgets) would jeopardize timely weather warnings that are critical to protecting Illinoisans, especially as we continue to see the effects of climate change through more intense and more frequent extreme weather events.' The Trump administration's efforts to trim the National Weather Service payroll faced bipartisan opposition even before the Texas flooding. Republican lawmakers in Nebraska, for example, objected to the weather service ceasing daily weather balloon launches from smaller offices as Democratic lawmakers rallied against cuts at NOAA's headquarters in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. But scrutiny about the budget moves and their impact on the weather services' performance grew as the death toll climbed in Texas. The NWS issued several warnings at least three hours before the Guadalupe River in Texas' Hill Country rose by more than 25 feet in two hours. But many residents and young campers died as the floods swelled in the middle of the night, fueling fierce debates over who was to blame for so many people not knowing about the imminent danger. One of the top concerns has been about the role NWS staffing reductions had on the agency's response. The weather service's San Angelo office had vacancies in key leadership roles, including a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge. The neighboring San Antonio office also had several crucial roles open. The Senate's top Democrat, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, called on an inspector general to investigate whether staffing cuts hampered the weather service's response. 'The roles left unfilled are not marginal, they're critical,' Schumer wrote. 'To put it plainly: They help save lives.' Erica Grow Cei, an NWS spokesperson, said the agency moved personnel to those offices over the Fourth of July weekend in response to the storms that caused the flooding. 'All forecasts and warnings were issued in a timely manner,' she wrote in an email message. 'Additionally, these offices were able to provide decision support services to local partners, including those in the emergency management community.' Grow Cei said the weather service is temporarily assigning and hiring 'a targeted number of permanent, mission-critical positions' to 'further stabilize frontline operations.' At a confirmation hearing last week, Neil Jacobs, Trump's nominee to lead NOAA, told senators he would make increasing staffing at the agency a 'top priority.' But many scientists worry about the long-term effects of the existing staffing shortages. 'Even before this terrible tragedy in Texas, which is still unfolding, we have been worried about the cuts that were done by the Trump administration' to federal agencies that handle weather-related emergencies, including the National Weather Service, said Juan Declet-Barreto, the bilingual social scientist for climate vulnerability at the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'There has been a degradation in the alerts and in the capacity of the National Weather Service to do its job.' Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, said it appeared the NWS had adequate staffing during the Texas flooding because it brought in extra scientists for the storms. The offices had five people working overnight instead of the usual two. 'I do worry, though, about how many times you can roll the dice,' Gensini said. 'Maybe next time, there won't be five people. It's dangerous to continue this understaffing of the weather service at large, because these events are not going to stop.' In Illinois, as in the rest of the country, the National Weather Service is at the forefront of preparing for weather-related disasters. But warnings from the federal forecasters are only the first step of a coordinated effort by government agencies to alert the public about imminent weather dangers. 'It's not just having good forecasts and good, accurate, timely warnings for these events; it's also communicating them to the potential affected areas and having these individuals react in the proper manner,' Gensini said. 'That requires emergency management, it requires planning, it requires the infrastructure and technology to disseminate that message properly.' Kevin Doom, a meteorologist at the NWS Chicago office, said one of the biggest challenges in responding to severe weather is making sure information flows to residents. 'That's where we have to put a little bit of trust in some of our partners to do that,' he said. In severe weather events like last Tuesday's flash flooding, Chicago's Office of Emergency Management & Communications played a key role. It operates nonstop with five to 10 people working there daily, emergency manager Matt Doughtie said. The city agency typically amplifies messages from the federal weather service while employees monitor the effects of the emergency. For instance, the city has computer systems that automatically send messages from the weather service through texts or emails from NotifyChicago, the agency's app and city social media accounts. When necessary, those automated systems also help activate the city's 118 tornado sirens. Additionally, Chicago's emergency management office can take control of select digital billboards around the city for emergency messaging. It also can send wireless emergency alerts, which broadcast emergency messages directly to cell phones. The city and National Weather Service coordinate to avoid overlap on shared resources like wireless alerts, Doughtie said. While the weather service generally sounds out announcements directly related to weather, the city agency handles more localized directions to residents, including evacuation or shelter-in-place orders, he added. Doughtie said the weather service is a strong partner that often sends representatives to help with planned city events, like parades and festivals, as well as emergencies. 'One of our strongest relationships is with their warning coordination meteorologist, who's been with them for a long time,' Doughtie said. 'If we were to lose somebody like that, that would hurt and we would feel that pinch. Thus far, we haven't really seen any real degradation of their services this year.' For weather events that stretch beyond the city's boundaries, Chicago's emergency management office collaborates with Cook County's Emergency Management and Regional Security department. Doughtie said the county's role is crucial because there are more than 130 municipalities in the county. In addition to coordinating information among municipalities, Cook County's emergency management department runs its own text notification system, AlertCook, for residents. It also can help broadcast shelter or evacuation orders, especially for suburban municipalities in the county. Angela Gilkes, interim executive director of Cook County's emergency department, said her agency also relies on National Weather Service data for its emergency responses. Specifically, localized forecasts about where storms of flooding might hit hardest allow the county to move portable pumps and generators to those sites in advance, she said. In the Texas floods, the role of local governments relaying the warnings from the National Weather Service has also come under scrutiny. In the Chicago area, the mechanisms for alerting the public vary county by county, and, in some cases, city by city. Emergency management officials in DuPage, Lake, Kane, McHenry and Kendall counties all said communication between federal and local authorities is key to ensuring residents know what is happening when a significant weather system hits. 'We are sharing weather intelligence (with partners) right away,' said Daniel Eder, manager of the Lake County Emergency Management Agency. Scott Buziecki, Kane County's emergency management director, said he relies on relationships with neighboring counties and agencies, many of which were 'built during disasters and emergencies,' while Roger Bonuchi, Kendall County's emergency management director, said he also teaches a NWS-certified storm spotter course that allows volunteers to report signs of unusual weather. The county currently has about 22 storm spotters who work with Bonuchi. Many Illinois counties use the Federal Emergency Management Agency's national alerting system to send alerts from the federal meteorologists. The system, called the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, or IPAWS, also lets local jurisdictions broadcast public safety announcements to television and radio stations. McHenry County strongly encourages farmers to have a solar, hand-crank or battery-powered NOAA weather radio, said county Emergency Management Director David Christensen, adding he doesn't want residents 'to rely on social media' where posts from unreliable sources could mislead or unnecessarily frighten residents. Outside of emergency systems and communications, another key difference between what happened in Texas and weather emergencies in Illinois is the two states' terrain. 'It's not the same type of flooding that happens in the Texas Hill Country, because we don't have the topography that they do, but what we do have that they don't is a significant amount more of impervious surfaces,' said Gensini, the NIU professor. 'You saw this (last Tuesday). There were water rescues on Ashland Avenue … from people trapped in their cars because of really just normal — what I would consider kind of run-of-the-mill — rainfall.' Chicago-area residents saw similar scenes on Thursday night when more rain fell and the National Weather Service issued its second flood-related alert of the week. It was a reminder to everyone who got those alerts that they should always be paying attention, said Doom, the NWS meteorologist. 'This may not be like the last time,' Doom said.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Yahoo
SC search and rescue team headed to Texas to help find flood victims
Search and recovery workers dig through debris looking for any survivors or remains of people swept up in the flash flooding at Camp Mystic on July 6, 2025 in Hunt, Texas. Heavy rainfall caused flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas. (Photo by) COLUMBIA — A team of five people and two dogs trained in disaster response will travel to Texas to help locate people swept away during last weekend's floods, Gov. Henry McMaster's office said Tuesday. More than 100 people, including 30 children, were killed when rivers in the Texas hills flooded over the weekend, inundating a girls' summer camp along with nearby homes. At least 25 people remained missing as of Monday, though the total number unaccounted for was still unclear, The Texas Tribune reported. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked McMaster for the state's help in a Monday phone call, according to the South Carolina governor's office. McMaster obliged, deploying a specialized team from South Carolina Task Force 1, which is trained to find and, when possible, help people in all sorts of disaster scenarios. The team includes two K-9s trained in detecting human remains through Greenville nonprofit Foothills Search and Rescue. 'Team South Carolina stands ready to offer any support we can,' McMaster said in a statement. 'In some of our toughest moments, the people of Texas were there for us. Now, it's our duty to return that support and stand by our friends in their time of need.' Last year, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department employees traveled to South Carolina to help clean up debris left behind when Helene swept through the state as a tropical storm. A federal mutual aid system called the emergency Management Assistance Compact helped coordinate the effort. South Carolina has long participated in the program and sends teams to help wherever disaster strikes, said Kim Stenson, director of the state's Emergency Management Division. 'Over the years, we've helped coordinate assistance for incidents in Kentucky, Florida, California, Alaska, and now Texas,' Stenson said in a statement. 'Our emergency response community stands ready and capable of answering the call when help is needed.'
