Published on September 17, 2017

Press Release - September 18, 2017 - UPDATED

California Task Force 3 – Scheduled to return Sunday, September 18 from Florida at 11 am today.

The Bay Area Urban Search and Rescue Task Force is scheduled to return Sunday, September 18 at 11 am to their base of operations located at 1376 Willow Road in Menlo Park after driving roughly 5000 miles back and forth across the United States to Elgin Air Force Base in Florida with 11 vehicles, 7 trailers and over 60,000 pounds of search and Rescue equipment.

The Task Force, one of two from the Bay Area, four from the State and fourteen from across the Country that were all deployed in advance of Hurricane Irma which devastated parts of Florida. Fortunately, the damage to the upper areas of Florida was minimal and the services of the specialized rescue team was not needed.

The Team members have been gone for over a week. The Task Force mobilized a new group of members to respond to Florida and Hurricane Irma 30 minutes after the water rescue team had returned from Texas and Hurricane Harvey. Fire Chief Schapelhouman said “we’ve never had such a short turn around before to get one group back in and deploy another. Team members either stayed or came in regardless of being deployed or not and so we had new people, serviced and checked vehicles with rehabilitated equipment back on the road in under twelve hours. That’s pretty awesome and huge testament to the type of amazing members that we have on this multi-agency Task Force.”

In total – Sharing the experience and opportunities to serve the Nation for this deployment were:

Menlo Park Fire Protection District – 10 Personnel

Central San Mateo County Fire Department – 8

City of Monterey Fire Department – 1

Palo Alto Fire Department – 2

San Mateo Fire Department – 3

Genentech – 2

Milpitas Fire Department – 2

Mountain View Fire Department – 4 (K9)

Redwood City Fire Department – 1

San Francisco Fire Department – 3 (K9 Teams)

San Jose Fire Department – 10

Santa Clara City Fire Department – 5

Santa Clara County Fire Protection District – 6

SRI International – 2

South San Francisco Fire Department -3 (K9)

Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety – 1

Woodside Fire Protection District – 2

Civilian Professionals - 16

Prior Deployments to the Nation’s most significant emergencies:

1991 Hurricane Iniki, Type 1, CA OES Mutual Aid

1993 Acceptance as a FEMA US&R Task Force

1993 Northridge Earthquake, Type 1

1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Type 1

1998 Hurricane Georges, IST

2001 World Trade Center, Type 1

2002 Winter Olympics, IST support

2003 Hurricane Isabel, IST support

2003 Space Shuttle Columbia, Canine, IST

2004 G-8 Summit, IST

2004 Republican National Convention, IST

2004 Democratic National Convention, IST

2004 Hurricane Charley, IST

2004 Hurricane Frances, IST

2004 Hurricane Ivan, IST

2005 Hurricane Dennis, IST

2005 Hurricane Katrina, Type 1, MPFD Water Rescue Team, IST

2005 Hurricane Rita, IST

2005 Hurricane Wilma, IST

2006 Hurricane Ernesto, Type 3, ISTXI

2007 Kansas Tornadoes, IST

2008 Hurricane Gustav, Type 3, IST

2008 Hurricane Ike, IST

2008 Hurricane Edouard, IST

2008 Republican National Convention, IST                         

2010 Hurricane Earl, IST

2010 San Bruno PG&E Gas Main Explosion

2014 Washington Mudslide

2014 Operation Alaskan Shield

2016 Hurricane Matthew, IST

2017 Hurricane Harvey, Water Rescue

2017 Hurricane Irma, Type 1 and IST