LEVY COUNTY, Fla. -- After deploying to Florida ahead of Hurricane Idalia on Monday, members of Virginia Task Force 2 were deployed into one of the affected communities on Thursday.
Among the 80 members of VATF2 are members of the Henrico County Fire Department, including Assistant Chief Mark Cumashot.
Cumashot said they were stationed at a convention center in Orlando which gave them the ability to deploy to any direction in the state and gave them protection from the hurricane, being further inland, and said they only experienced two days of rain.
He said Thursday morning, 75% of VATF2 was being sent to Levy County.
"One of the counties located on the west coast that received a good amount of damage from the storm," said Cumashot. "It was right in the storm's path as it came from the Gulf on to the state of Florida."
Cumashot said the team is deploying to search for any residents in need of help and to assess the extent of the damage. He added they will start moving through the county in their trucks and move to on foot if there is too much damage to drive through.
"And we're also taking our boats with us. So, if we encounter remaining high floodwaters, we'll be able to switch over to a boat-based operation and still complete our mission."
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Among the challenges he expected to encounter there are environmental and manmade ones.
"The environmental side is the flooding, the current, the mud. We also have to deal with the downed trees. Now these downed trees can be extremely dangerous, if we're trying to clear them in order to get a pathway to areas beyond that block roadway," explained Cumashot. "And then, on the manmade side, we have to think about the electrical grid system as that comes back online. Generators that could be back feeding primary supply lines. We also have to think about the hazmat. Think about how many gas stations or other areas might have gotten flooded and had a release of those hazardous materials that are now in the water and also in the mud that we may have to be moving through."
Cumashot said the length of their deployment at this stage remains to be seen as once they complete their search of Levy County, they will check back in with officials guiding the response to see if they are needed anywhere else in the state.
VATF2 posts update on their deployments on Facebook which you can see here.
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