World-class search and rescue team in Miami has responded to disasters like September 11 and Hurricane Katrina

(CNN) – When part of Champlain Towers South fell in Surfside, Florida last week, members of a world-class search and rescue operation quickly arrived on the scene, working diligently to rescue victims from the rubble that had once been condominiums.

The team is used to crises like this. Although based in Miami-Dade County, team members travel the US and around the world to tackle disasters of all kinds.

This time, however, the crisis was on its own turf.

They are members of Urban Search and Rescue Florida Task Force-1, a group of search and rescue experts operating under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). When they are not sent to countries in crisis, many of them work for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue as local firefighters.

The task force, also known as Florida Task Force-1, or FL-TF1, has responded to some of the most notable disasters in recent history. Its members were sent to New York after the September 11 attacks and to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They have been on the ground in Haiti, rescuing victims of the 2010 earthquake, and in Rwanda, helping coordinate international rescue teams amid a genocidal war in 1994.

They had only responded once before in their own community, when Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992. Responding to the collapse of the Surfside building is particularly challenging – aside from the dangers of constantly moving heavy debris – the site you are in your home county and the victims could be people you knew.

Now, instead of being the support team for the groups leading the rescue and recovery, Florida Task Force-1 is leading that work themselves. Few teams are better equipped for this, said Curt Sommerhoff, former director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Emergency Management.

“Obviously, you never want an event like this to happen on your patio,” he told CNN. “But if it’s going to happen in your backyard, having the resources of a Florida Task Force-1… That’s huge.”

They have experience in crises of all kinds

The members of the FL-TF1 have seen it all: earthquakes, terrorist attacks, air accidents, among others. The breadth of their experience is what makes them so skilled and dependable in a disaster, said Carlos Castillo, a former FEMA official and veteran of the Miami-Dade Fire Department who helped develop Florida Task Force-1.

Florida Task Force-1 is one of 28 federal search and rescue task forces overseen by FEMA, and its capabilities extend beyond careful debris removal. There are health professionals who provide emergency care for victims trapped in the rubble, engineering experts who stabilize a collapsed structure to prevent further damage, and logistics coordinators who keep all response teams organized.

Disaster response can quickly become confusing, especially when dozens of different rescue teams are responding, as in Surfside. (In addition to the human members of Florida Task Force-1, there are dogs trained to detect living and deceased victims in the rubble, Castilllo said.)

Team members carry their own gear with them when they travel to a disaster, roughly 20,000 kilos, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. They are self-sufficient, so they will not cause further damage or rely too heavily on the host state or the country in crisis, Castillo said.

Most of the Florida Task Force-1 members are also Miami-Dade Fire Department firefighters, Castillo said, and when they are not called in for a crisis, they respond to local emergencies. Between regular shifts, they are training for the specialized work they will need to know when sent to major disasters; They are as familiar with firefighting as they are with using sonar tracking devices or cutting concrete to rescue victims.

“That’s one of the benefits of this program, that specialized equipment, tools and training are available to be used in our home jurisdiction, like what you see in the Surfside incident,” Castillo said.

Sommerhoff, who worked alongside FL-TF1 as head of the Miami-Dade County Emergency Management Department, often sought help from the local hurricane preparedness and response task force, including for jobs such as distributing supplies to residents. or organize a base of operations for local officials.

«He dedicates much more to what they do than [rescatar]”Said Sommerhoff, now director of emergency management at Florida State University.

The team was created after a catastrophic earthquake

Castillo was working for the Miami-Dade Fire Department when he and his fellow firefighters were dispatched to Soviet Armenia in 1988. A catastrophic earthquake shook the northern part of the country, and Soviet leaders appealed to the world for help. But the process was not coordinated, Castillo recalls: so many countries participated that it was unclear who was in charge and what teams were performing different functions.

The disorganized response in Armenia partly inspired the US to found the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System, creating task forces of search and rescue specialists across the country that could be deployed to the disaster sites in question. hours. Castillo helped design and steer the system, he said, which was first put into practice when Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992 (the Armenia disaster also inspired the United Nations to formalize an International Search and Rescue Advisory Group, Castillo noted. ). Since then, Florida Task Force-1 has built an international reputation for excellence, said Gregg Favre, a search and rescue expert who runs the St. Louis Area Regional Response System in Missouri, which functions in a similar way to Florida. Task Force-1.

“The quality and intensity of the team that Miami-Dade has is really significant,” said Favre, who previously led the St. Louis Fire Department. “If there’s any kind of silver lining to all of this, it’s having those resources, as the preeminent specialists outside of the New York team or the Texas team are within an hour of that answer.”

It’s a tiring but life-saving job

The first time Castillo represented the United States on a rescue trip was after the earthquake in Armenia, where he rescued a woman who had been trapped under rubble for five days. Later, officially as part of Florida Task Force-1, its first rescue operation after a terrorist event was in Oklahoma City. His first time leading a federal response was after 9/11, where he led the incident support team that responded to the Pentagon.

Despite his pride in the team he helped create, it was a demanding job and affects first responders, Castillo said.

“It’s emotionally and physically difficult,” he said. “The more you get physically involved, the more it affects you emotionally.”

The building collapse in Surfside, where more than 140 people are still missing as of Wednesday afternoon, is a particularly demanding task, Castillo said, because some members of Task Force Florida-1 likely knew some of the victims or residents who have not yet been found.

Still, he said, many of the FL-TF1 members have continued with rescue work for most of their careers because of the rewarding elements of their work, such as saving lives and helping heal their community.

“I am proud that what I started has reached this point and that it has grown across the country… That is a positive thing,” he said.