GOSHEN — A water rescue team made of local firefighters is returning home after a week of providing assistance in North Carolina.
Fourteen firefighters from Goshen, South Bend and Mishawaka as well as officers with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources departed for North Carolina on Sept. 25 as Hurricane Helene bore down on the region. The storm system caused widespread flooding and killed more than 170 people in six states.
The team left in the evening with a load of equipment including rescue boats. The members are specially trained in swift water and flood rescue response.
A portion of the team was sent to serve with the Ashford North Cove Fire Department in Marion, North Carolina, on Sept. 27. The community was on generator power and roads were impassible due to storm damage, according to information from the Mishawaka Fire Department.
The full team performed lifesaving search and rescue operations near Old Fort, North Carolina, the next day, according to the department. While those continued, some members spent a day clearing fallen trees to make a mountain road passable for trapped residents.
Photos sent back by the firefighters show uprooted trees left in the middle of mud-covered streets, destroyed homes, vehicles that were carried away by rushing water and sections of roadways and railways that were washed out. The group was headed home as of Wednesday evening, according to information from the Mishawaka Fire Department.
The team’s deployment came as Indiana Task Force 1 was activated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond to Florida in anticipation of the storm. The 80-person search and rescue team moved to North Carolina in the days after the storm.
In the Appalachian region of western North Carolina on Monday and Tuesday, the task force helped local and state agencies in ensuring the safety and whereabouts of community members, according to information from INTF-1. The team on Thursday was carefully searching long debris fields where flood waters had raced through communities as part of widespread efforts by groups from local, state and federal agencies from across the country, according to information from INTF-1.
Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland since Katrina, disaster officials said, with a death toll of at least 200 across the Southeast.
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