North Carolina is sending help to Texas as the state endures catastrophic flooding flowing Hurricane Harvey. Two Helo-Aquatic Rescue Teams, known as NC HART, are en route to San Antonio, Texas to help with flood rescue and response.
Said NC Governor Roy Cooper:
“Our state knows from experience with hurricanes how devastating flooding can be. Our hearts go out to the people of Texas, and we have two seasoned search and rescue teams with vast experience on their way to help.”
Some of the same crews heading to Texas helped rescue people trapped in floodwaters last fall following Hurricane Matthew. Search and rescue crews pulled more than 2,300 people from flooded homes and cars when the storm hit North Carolina last October, including more than 100 rescued by helicopter.
Two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters and eight airmen from the NC National Guard, six rescue technicians (three from the Charlotte Fire Department, two from Asheville Fire and one from Transylvania EMS), and two NC Emergency Management area coordinators will spend the next 10 days supporting rescue missions in San Antonio. The area coordinators departed Sunday afternoon for Little Rock, Arkansas where they rest before reporting to San Antonio on Monday. The Blackhawks and rescue crews will fly out Monday morning and meet up with the area coordinators in San Antonio in the afternoon.
Said NC Public Safety Secretary Erik Hooks:
“North Carolina is very fortunate to have a strong team of professionals who are more than willing to share their knowledge and experience to help others. Having additional staff who have ‘been there, done that’ is invaluable during disasters.”
NC HART is a North Carolina Emergency Management asset that pairs the best civilian rescuers with military and law enforcement aviation assets. Local rescue technicians complete extensive helo-aquatic rescue training and are paired with helicopters from the State Highway Patrol or NC National Guard. On any given mission, two or three of the 60 specially-trained technicians are called upon and paired with helicopter pilots to rescue stranded or injured persons. Technicians and pilots train together monthly, rotating training sites so they can practice various types of rescues: people stranded in rapidly moving water, on mountains, cliffs or waterfalls. Formally established in 2004, the NC HART program was the first of its kind in the nation to implement a regimented training and response program that combines civilian and military resources.
Texas requested help from North Carolina through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), which helps coordinate relief for disaster-stricken states to make available the right type of resources at the right time. The requesting state (Texas in this case) fully reimburses the assisting state for the total costs incurred. All resources are coordinated between state emergency management agencies.
The EMAC system was developed by state governors following Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when critical resources were needed by the state of Florida. North Carolina has sent teams to help with numerous disaster response efforts including flooding in South Carolina and West Virginia in 2015, Virginia tornadoes that same year, to Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina, and Alaska following flooding in 2007.
Ed. Note: Looking for ways to help? See this list of needs compiled by Huffington Post.
Background: NASA Satellite Images Show the Evolution of Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey continues to churn toward the Texas coast, and is expected to make landfall as a major hurricane sometime late Friday, August 25, 2017, or early Saturday, August 26, according to the National Hurricane Center. It would be the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2005.
The rapid intensification of Harvey is depicted in this set of false-color images from NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) instruments on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The earlier images were acquired at 3:05pm CDT (19:05 UTC) on Wednesday, August 23, when Harvey became a tropical storm soon after crossing from the Yucatan Peninsula over warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The later images were acquired at 2:59am CDT (7:59 UTC) on Friday, August 25, when Harvey was a Category 2 hurricane.
Warm colors in the infrared images (red, orange, yellow) show areas with little cloud cover. Cold colors (blue, purple) show areas covered by clouds that have developed sufficiently to reach high, cold altitudes, creating strong thunderstorms. The darker the color, the colder and higher the clouds and the stronger the thunderstorms. In the microwave images, blue indicates areas of heavy rainfall beneath the coldest clouds.
These images illustrate how, over a 36-hour period, Harvey became more organized (shown by its more circular shape and more-developed rain bands in the later images), intensified (shown by the growing area of blue and purple colors in the infrared) and moved northwest toward Texas. The microwave images show how the areas with rain have grown in area and intensity.
Together, these two instruments give a detailed picture of the atmospheric conditions in and around a storm like Harvey. These observations are used by weather forecasters to predict how Harvey will move and change strength.
For more information on AIRS, visit airs.jpl.nasa.gov.
Sources: Ford Porter (NC Office of the Governor) and Alan Buis (Jet Propulsion Lab)