Another strike team returning from flooded North Carolina
A second strike team of Orange and Seminole county firefighters began their journey home Wednesday from North Carolina, where they went to offer medical assistance after Hurricane Florence.
Ambulance Strike Team 502 departed Sept. 18 to relieve AST 501, which was deployed ahead of the storm’s Sept. 14 landfall and returned home Sept. 20. Infrastructure of coastal areas in North Carolina remain flooded as dams in the mountain areas drain their abundance of storm water.
AST 502, composed of firefighterEMTs and medics, assisted local firstresponders by treating those in need of medical help and unable to drive to hospitals due to flooded highways, said Mike Wajda, division chief of operations for Orange County.
“When the rivers began to flood, it cut off people’s ability to get to hospitals,” he said. “The team has seen and dealt with heat emergencies, cuts and wounds from debris hidden under the water. They’ve supplied stitches and then discharged them.”
North Carolina authorities set up a “field hospital” within a high school in the town of Deep Run, where AST 502 treated 300 total patients, Wajda said.
However, several patients needed more intensive medical care than the field hospital staff could provide, including surgery. The team was able to provide transportation through the flood waters, either directly to hospitals or to helicopter zones.
Orange and Seminole fire departments were not alone in representing Florida in North Carolina as the agencies were also joined by fire-rescue teams from Osceola, Levy, Lee, Escambia, St. Johns, Sarasota, Walton, Hillsborough, Flagler and Pasco counties as well as agencies from St. Cloud and Temple Terrace.
AST 502 is due back at Orange County Fire Rescue headquarters at noon today.
While the need for out-of-state responders is lessening, the work in North Carolina is far from over, Wajda said.
“The immediate field hospital was taken down yesterday,” he said. “It could take months to a year [for North Carolina] to recover . ... We operate for a period of time and then hand it back to first reponders. There are still swift-water rescue teams that will remain for some time. Our part is coming to an end.”