Following the landfall of Hurricane Ian, and receipt of a request for help, a team of Ohio 911 dispatchers, radio technicians, and support personnel are heading to Florida to lend assistance.
The Ohio TERT Team, part of the Telecommunicator Emergency Response Taskforce, are a group of public safety personnel from across Ohio who have volunteered for a 14-day deployment to assist local 911 centers, fire, EMS and law enforcement agencies whose own personnel have been on duty without break since Ian’s landfall near Cayo Costa on September 27th. Other TERT Teams from Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and others are also responding to Florida’s call for help.
The 18 member team is comprised of members from across the state, and includes personnel from centers in Strongsville, Gahanna, Urbana, Bedford, Westlake, North Lawrence, Franklin County, and the State of Ohio. They will be assigned to work 12 hour shifts in centers in the hardest hit part of Florida, to allow home agency personnel time to decompress, and address their own home situations, which were not immune from Ian’s impact.
Ohio TERT Committee Co-Chair Cody Post, who works for the City of Akron, said that the team’s goal is to assist their Florida counterparts in any way possible. “Our colleagues in Florida have endured quite a disaster, and the situation is still unfolding. Our aim, along with the other state TERT Teams, is to give the Florida dispatchers and technicians a chance to catch their breath, and figure out how their homes and loved ones fared during Ian.”
The team departs Monday morning from Gahanna, and expects to arrive in Florida on Tuesday afternoon.
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Ohio TERT is part of the National Joint TERT Initiative. For media inquiries during their deployment, please contact Committee Co-Chair Mory Fuhrmann at fuhrmannm@mifflin-oh.gov, or Committee Member Adam Moledor at amoledor@southsummitdispatch.com