Hurricane/Tropical Storm Florence dumped a large amount of rainfall on the East Coast over this past weekend, resulting in major flooding. Many areas are currently inaccessible, leaving the citizens as well as Public Safety personnel in desperate need of assistance.
Hamilton County Unified Emergency Communications has over 30 Public Safety Telecommunicators trained and equipped to support requests for mutual aid assistance as members of a Telecommunicator Emergency Response Taskforce (TERT). TERT teams aid other Public Safety Communications Centers in times of disaster when their resources are limited and/or stressed.
On Monday, Hamilton County Emergency Communications responded to a Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) request for two TERT teams to deploy to disaster areas in North Carolina. In less than 12 hours, a six-person team was deployed to Beaufort, N.C. and a four-person team was deployed to Brunswick County, N.C.
Jeff Carney, director of Operations and National Joint TERT Initiative Committee Board member said, “TERT is a vital program that highlights the drive to help that is at the core of each public safety communications professional. When Public Safety Emergency Communications Centers need help, we help each other as any family would.”
These teams will work in and support the area’s Emergency Communications Centers until such time they can return to normal operations.
For more information about TERT visit the website at www.njti-tert.org.