Urban Search and Rescue
In September, 1992, category-4 hurricane Iniki struck the Hawaiian island of Kauai with sustained winds of 145 miles per hour. It was the most powerful storm to ever hit the Hawaiian islands and caused 3.1 billion dollars in damage.
Even though we were a very new team and not yet prepared or equipped for deployment, we were activated….
We had four hours to assemble at Fire Station-1, get checked in, grab our gear, and board county busses for the trip to Travis Air Force Base. (The Department of Defense is responsible for logistic support and transportation.)
In the early days of the FEMA task forces, someone forgot to tell the Air Force! When we arrives at the main gate we were met with looks of total confusion. They were not accustom to strangers arriving at their main gate asking for a flight to Hawaii ASAP. It didn’t help that we did not yet have uniforms. I had on a NASA flight suit, firefighters had their menlo Park uniforms, and others had whatever they could scrounge. We ended up sleeping on the floor of the terminal while the local brass checked with their headquarters…
The next morning things were beginning to move forward, but it turns out that you can’t just pile cargo on a pallet, sling a net over it, and place it on an aircraft. Eventually several of us attended an Air Force loadmaster course and learned how to properly pack for air transport.
Once the cargo was properly packed we boarded an Air Force C-141 for the trip to Hawaii. The captain was an Air Force reserve and she was also a full-time United Airlines pilot. The crew were very professional and great to work with.
It was a smooth flight and went well until we landed at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. We got the same deer in the headlights look from folks there and on the island of Kauai. “Nothing is on fire. We don’t need firefighters.”
We stuck around on the base for several days, and finally gave up and went home. All of those early hiccups have long been attended to.
If you watched coverage of the rescue and recovery effort after the Surfside condominium collapse in Florida, you were watching The Florida USAR task forces in action.
