A civilian search and rescue team based in the city of Fairfax, Virginia, has joined the emergency response in Florida as Hurricane Milton barrels down.
Members of the nonprofit, Tidewater Disaster Response, had been working to ease suffering in western North Carolina but rushed down to Florida this week to be in the path of Milton.
“Currently, we have a four-man team deployed. We’re outside the Tampa Bay area staging, waiting for landfall. The team we’ve deployed is a swift water rescue team that’s been cross trained with chain saw and route clearance operations,” said Costas Sardelis, logistics coordinator for Tidewater Disaster Response.
“So the two main focuses of our organization as a whole are swift water rescue and route clearance immediately following disasters. And this core group of guys are some of our core members. We all have backgrounds working in various fire and EMS capacity,” he added.
Separately, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also activated Virginia Task Force 1 and Maryland Task Force 1 to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. These federally-supported search and rescue teams are drawn from fire departments in Fairfax, Montgomery, Howard and Prince George’s counties and D.C. Fire & EMS.
Tidewater Disaster Response units are all trained and certified to meet state and national standards, but all of its members are civilians.
“Tidewater Disaster Response is an all nonprofit search and rescue organization that was formed back in 2018. We work to specifically augment local resources when they’re inundated in times of natural disaster and crisis,” Sardelis said.
Team members who hurried to Florida before Milton made landfall had been bringing supplies to western North Carolina, which is still recovering from Hurricane Helene.
“Myself and the team I was working with, with some of our sister organizations, ended up running several fixed-wing aircraft for four days, moving over 16,000 pounds of supplies over the span of eight different supply drops,” said Sardelis.
The disaster response nonprofit has been kept busy for the past few weeks and there could be even more work to come, with hurricane season lasting till the end of November.
“Hurricanes are our bread and butter. This is what we’re good at. So we’re happy to be here to help in whatever way we can,” he added.
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