Colorado task force returns home after search and rescue mission to hurricane-battered Louisiana

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LAKEWOOD, Colo. — "I wish we could do more, honestly, to help the citizens,” said Pam Krotz. Krotz works with the Colorado Task Force 1, which recently spent more than a week away from their home and families to help Louisiana in initial recovery efforts after Hurricane Ida hit the U.S. The nearly 50-member team is now back home after helping as much as they could.

The category four hurricane hit Louisiana on August 29, causing major destruction. At least 15 deaths are linked to the storm just in Louisiana. Many in New Orleans have now regained power but hundreds of thousands across the Gulf Coast are still without it, and may be for a while. 

“They have the recovery effort to go through, and it’s going to be a long haul,” said Mike Parker, a technical information specialist with Colorado Task Force 1. 

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“Representing Colorado in these types of incidents like this is quite an honor. Because we’re asked to do some things that other people can’t do,” said Daley.

That training allows the team to help in whatever way they’re needed and sometimes that means dealing with people who are going through the initial shock of finding their home destroyed.

“It was difficult to see when people were first seeing their home or first seeing their business [...] and to see their reactions of ‘Wow, what am I going to do now? How do I get started?’” explained Parker. “But we were happy to be a part of that process, getting them started.”

For now, the task force is back home recovering after a lot of work. And now they wait to be called to the frontlines again to help wherever in the country they’re needed. 

"We try and do our best job every time for the citizens and for FEMA," said Krotz. "Hopefully we did a good enough job that it will be noted by the administrators and we'll get to go out and do it again."

If you're looking to help those who are affected by Hurricane Ida, you can find some resources here. 

Julio Sandoval is a multimedia journalist with Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at juliosandoval@rmpbs.org.

Amanda Horvath is a multimedia producer with Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach her at amandahorvath@rmpbs.org

Luckily, most of the people who lived on the island had evacuated before the storm hit. That meant this Colorado-associated Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) team was mostly doing initial damage assessments as opposed to search and rescue efforts. 

“We’ll actually rate the buildings and determine whether it's not damaged, 50 percent, 100 percent gone, things like that,” explained Daley. He went on to say these initial assessments help kick-start recovery efforts by allowing people to get access to funds. “So instead of going down and rescuing individual people, we made it easier for them to recover from this faster.”

Usually, this team is called for search and recovery efforts; it’s what they’re trained to do. The team is made up of 200 members that include firefighters, paramedics, physicians, structural engineers, hazardous materials technicians, heavy rigging specialists and canine handlers. This trip included 45 firefighters, a doctor and a structural engineer.

“When we’re giving MRE’s (Meals, Ready-to-Eat) to people, when we’re giving water to people—that’s what they need now—and all we’re really doing is biding them time until they can get the recovery efforts started," said Daley. "It’s quite gratifying."

The team also remembers a specific person whose horses they were able on Grand Isle. Without any utilities working, the task force was able to provide much-needed drinking water to the animals. 

Parker and his other teammates described witnessing significant destruction when they arrived in Louisiana. They left on August 28—a day before the hurricane made landfall—and drove more than 20 hours from Colorado. 

“When we got down there, we actually weathered the storm in Lafayette. It really was like a bad thunderstorm in Colorado,” task force member Brian Daley described.

When the team first arrived, they were sent out to recovery efforts in the suburbs of New Orleans. That meant team members performed door-to-door searches and preliminary damage assessments. 

“We got into the areas of Jefferson Parish, south of the city of New Orleans, and the damage was very similar to after what we get from hailstorms or huge thunderstorms,” said Daley. “There were trees down, power lines are down, a lot of debris in the streets. It wasn't really until we got down to Grand Isle, which was literally the eye of the storm, that we saw the total devastation associated with it.”

After initial efforts near New Orleans, the team was called to Grand Isle, a small island off the coast of Louisiana.

“There was not a building there that wasn’t affected,” said Daley. “Water or wind damage or both, or the home is just gone.”

The damage on that island was significant when the team arrived: all utilities were down, homes were “obliterated,” and roads were covered in three to four feet of sand. 

“They build these houses on stilts that are 15 feet, and we’re driving through areas where half of it [has] got sand in it,” said Daley.

“Driving through all of that destruction just… house after house, tree after tree, fence after fence, utility pole after utility pole…that was really striking to see what kind of recovery effort they have to go on down there. And they’re going to be working on that for a while,” said Parker.