Task Force 1 awaits orders as line workers come home

An urban search and rescue team headquartered in Boone County was heading up the East Coast Tuesday as Hurricane Dorian lost strength but continued to threaten the United States.

Missouri Task Force 1 was on its way Tuesday morning to Columbia, South Carolina, to wait for Dorian’s arrival, the Boone County Fire Protection District posted on its Facebook page. The team is expected to arrive Tuesday night.

They will be staging for the storm and training.

Municipal utility line crews from Missouri and Arkansas arrived in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday to prep for the storm and restore power lines in its aftermath. But Missouri Public Utility Alliance spokesman Kerry Cordray said Tuesday that the 46 utility workers are on their way home, as the storm shifted more north than expected.

Dorian was downgraded Tuesday morning to a Category 2 and was still causing a major storm surge in the Bahamas. The storm slammed into the islands as a Category 5 over the weekend.

Local line workers from Columbia, Hermann and Rolla were among those sent to Florida when the storm threat was greater.

“The storm … didn’t come ashore in the place it was forcasted to do so,” Cordray said. “So they hung tight until they were released then by the Florida Public Power Association.”

Cordray said if other states called for help, crews under the public utility alliance would potentially respond.

“This was going to be a Category 5 storm that was going to hit the coast, and it was going to be an all hands on deck kind of thing,” Cordray said. “Now it’s a lower-grade storm, it’s going to go up the coast, it’s unlikely it’ll have the same kind of impact that the other storm would have potentially had.”

The cities that receive assistance from utility workers from other areas are responsible for reimbursing those cities and crews for their time. Cordray said that money often comes from state or federal emergency funding.

Missouri utility workers responded to Hurricane Michael last year. Cordray said those major storm responses are increasing in frequency.

“It’s really just been over the past three or four years that this has started to be a regular thing during the hurricane season,” Cordray said. “We’ve had these kind of major storms, and they’ve activated the national network.”