As Hurricane Harvey approaches the Gulf Coast of Texas, rescue and recovery operations are getting into place with some help from Nebraska.
Almost 100 members of Nebraska's Urban Search and Rescue Task Force One are in College Station, Texas, waiting to be deployed to San Antonio to help in any recovery operations.
The majority of the task force is made up of Lincoln firefighters, with some from the Omaha metro as well. Lincoln Fire Chief Michael Despain says FEMA contacted them just after 8:00 Thursday night to have Task Force One respond. "We are there in support of the hurricane, in addition another five or six incident USR teams are also deployed from throughout the United States to that incident."
Despain says the teams don't have assignments yet, but they are prepared no matter the circumstances. "They fully expect to see localized flooding, so there could be swift water rescues."
The task force usually gets called in after the damage has been done, but Despain says officials in Texas could see the writing on the walls. "In this case they saw the hurricane coming, they saw it increasing in intensity and so made that request for additional resources."
Despain says most of the crew members are already down in Texas, but more will be on their way soon.
Hurricane Harvey is expected to make landfall Friday night or early Saturday morning. Experts say the hurricane could drop up to three feet of rain in some places with some areas seeing twelve foot storm surges.