BREAKING NEWS - November 17, 2018 – Update 3 pm Task Force 3 Deployed to the Camp Fire to help locate missing people

The Bay Area’s Rescue Team, California Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 3 (CA-TF3), was activated Wednesday night for a Search and Recovery mission assignment to the Camp Fire in Butte County. 

45 Team members, 13 vehicles with 7 trailer and over 50 thousand pounds of technical search, rescue and recovery equipment deployed from the Task Forces Special Operations Warehouse in East Palo just after noon, Saturday, headed to a base camp in Oroville.

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Pictured Above and attached – 45 Members of Task Force 3 are headed out to assist in finding the missing at the Camp Fire – Credit Fire Photographer Peter Mootz

The Task Force is one of eight California Governors Office of Emergency Services (Cal-OES) State Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Task Forces and one of twenty eight National Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Teams. Team members come from various fire agencies such as the Menlo Park Fire District (the sponsor), Central County, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City, Santa Clara City, Santa Clara County and San Jose Fire Department as well as the Woodside Fire Protection District along with civilian professional with Facebook, Genentech and Stanford Research International (SRI).

Their capabilities broadly include Search, Rescue and Recovery, but specifically they offer a “Swiss Army knife” approach of needed features such as wide area search capabilities, technical extrication equipment needed for disentanglement, heavy lifting and moving equipment, emergency radio communications support, structural integrity and stability assessments, decontamination capability for both people and animals, medical assessment and specialized dog teams for Human Remains Discovery (HRD), to name a few.

Unlike cadaver dogs that can only typically find an entire person, HRD Dogs have a fine tuned sense of smell and lots of extra training which helps them locate small portions of a human being. The concept was developed locally and tested during the Space Shuttle Columbia Tragedy and was extremely beneficial in helping to find the Astronauts. 

Fire Chief Schapelhouman said “after we proved we could help to find the Columbia Astronauts, FEMA adopted the HRD capability for the US&R Teams. While we would much rather find people alive, being able to find their remains, often gives family and friends closure as well as important financial death benefits, thats extremely important. With over 1000 people still missing, the Team members know what is potentially ahead of them”.
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