 I'm Brian May in the Cal OES newsroom. Over the past several days, the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services has received requests from the state of Texas and FEMA officials to activate some of our state and national urban search and rescue task force teams. Those teams are now responding in support of emergency operations related to Hurricane Harvey up and down the Texas Gulf Coast. We realize some of you may have questions as to how those requests come in and what our California USAR teams will be doing while deployed in Texas. So this afternoon, we had a chance to sit down with Mark Gilarducci, the director of Cal OES, and ask him exactly how this is playing out. Mark, I know you're busy. I want to appreciate your time for this this afternoon. I want to ask you some of the questions that we've been getting in our office. The first one, which is just, how many teams have we sent from California? What's the process that they go through to get there? Well, currently we've actually deployed eight of our urban search and rescue task forces. We actually have eight, what we call state national. These are teams that are sponsored by local government fire agencies and are part of the state system, but also are part of the national system under the Urban Search and Rescue Program. And all eight of those teams have been deployed to Texas. And the teams that have been deployed, some have deployed as what we call full urban search and rescue teams, which includes all of the heavy structural rescue capabilities, the engineering, the medical, this multifunctional capability, and then about four of those. And then other four have deployed as a smaller component focused on doing swift water and flood rescue. All of the teams come with a swift water and flood rescue component. These are multifunctional teams designed to deal with pretty much any kind of disaster the country may face. But there's a smaller component that we bring that are a little bit lighter on their feet, and they can go in and deploy rapidly into some of these areas to focus on water rescues. And you talk about the teams going in, they're actually coming with their own small boats that once they get there, they're self-deficient, correct? They're completely self-contained. They not only have the necessary rescue equipment, but they've got a couple of different kinds of boats. They have inflatable rescue boats, and then they've got flat aluminum rescue boats that are designed to go over debris and other kinds of things in floodwaters. And they're all self-sustained for a number of days. They go out, and they don't need a lot of outside logistic support initially. They're really going to hit the ground running and begin to do search and rescue almost immediately. What other events have you gotten a call for, or has California gotten called, to send our USAR teams out for? Well, the program was started here in California back in the late 80s and early 90s. And since then, these specialized teams have responded literally all over the world. I mean, they have been domestically here to a number of hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina, which is probably the best known. In addition, they've responded to the World Trade Center, terrorism events, the Oklahoma City bombing, and of course the Northridge earthquake here in California. And we've had a number of flood scenarios occur here in California, 97, 95 floods. And most recently, this past winter, we deployed the swiftwater rescue components of these task forces out throughout California when we were dealing with a number of pretty significant flooding here in California. Internationally, they've been to Nepal earthquake and the Haiti earthquake. And they've been to the Philippines. So they've moved around the world quite a bit as well. You touched on their training. I had a chance to go out with them a couple of days, a few months ago, just for a couple of days on the American River and watch their training. But that was just for two days. Can you talk about the broad spectrum of training that they go through so that they can be prepared for what they're going into now? Yeah, these are probably our highest trained, what we call special operations focus teams. They go through a variety of different kinds of scenario trainings. Everything from structural collapse as a result of really any kind of condition, whether it's wind driven structural collapse or an earthquake or something like a terrorist action, like we saw at the World Trade Center where you actually bring a building down. They do a lot of training in technical search operations, being able to locate people who may be trapped under rubble using very high tech devices and other kinds of search techniques to be able to locate where these victims are. The use of heavy machinery and heavy tools to be able to cut through things like heavy concrete and rebar and other kinds of materials. In fact, there's really not really any kind of material that these teams cannot really deal with to be able to go in and rescue people. They also have an engineering component. They're taught components of structural engineering. How do buildings basically react to wind or earthquake or bombing blast type of situation? They have a medical component where they're able to do what's called USAR medicine or special collapse medicine where you've got individuals who may be trapped. You have to treat them while they're still in a trapped situation to be able to get them out. They also have hazardous materials training and they have the ability to deal with chemical, biological, nuclear, radiological kind of events that may take place. And of course they have the swift water and flood rescue training to deal with flooding conditions and fast water situations. So they're very multifunctional and can be utilized on a number of different kinds of disasters. We wanna understand and respect the gravity of what's happening in Texas, but I think it's natural for Californians to say, are we still protected? Should something happen in the next couple of weeks here? Can you talk to that extent? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, you have to remember California is obviously the largest state in the country and we are extremely resource rich here. Even though we have a lot of disasters in California, which many of us watch on the news all the time, we're constantly responding to those. Our job here at the Office of Emergency Services is to constantly manage resources and what we call drawdown. We look at all of the events that are currently taking place within the state across the country and around the world. We look at what requests are made to us from other locations and we're constantly balancing the number of resources available to the needs that there are. We still have a lot of resources in California. We've deployed these teams, but we also have beyond the eight federal, state federal teams, I have another 13 urban search and rescue teams that are throughout the state of California tied in with other local entities that we can still call upon. So we are still pretty covered and we at OES would never allow the drawdown so much that we put ourselves in jeopardy. So it's a big balancing act, but we still have a few resources that we certainly can commit and support the folks in Texas and wherever else the storm may be going. Along those lines, do you anticipate sending more or getting the request to send more at this point? Actually, we're in conversations now with regards to the potential for sending additional resources. This is a truly catastrophic situation going on the Gulf Coast. Really, this is a situation where it is all hands on deck and in this effort of one team, one fight as a national system, a national mutual aid system, it's really our responsibility to support our other states when they've got these kinds of events as they would support us if we were to have a major earthquake or another kind of event here. You talk about your inconstant communications. Can you describe in any detail what's happening every day between Texas and not only California, but any other states that could be sending mutual aid? Well, there's a lot of coordination happening at different levels. Certainly Texas itself has its hands full of dealing with what's right in front of them. They're responding to the immediate needs. Above them, you have this coordination that's taking place at a national level because there are so many national entities that are engaged and there are a number of states. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency plays a critical role in that and they're in constant conversation with us with regards to what are the additional resources. Maybe they're specialized, not just swift water and flood rescue. Maybe they would need structural engineers or maybe they would need specialists in recovery operations or emergency sheltering. We have a wide variety of capabilities in California given just the fact that we are so disaster prone. We've got a lot of capability here that we could provide them a lot of resources as necessary. So that coordination of communications happens between the state of Texas and us and it also happens between us and FEMA on a larger, broader basis. And final question, the deployment where a lot of people don't understand how long of a time period are we talking about our resources being sent there at one time? Well, each individual task force typically goes out for a 14 to 21 day commitment. And this is a situation that is not gonna go away anytime soon. So we're in it for the long haul to support the state of Texas or any other state. It may mean that we need to rotate personnel but as long as we're needed, California will be committed to supporting this particular incident. Prep where you prepare all year long for something like this to happen and then you send the guys out there and tell them go do your thing. Well, I mean, like I say, California we have enough events where we keep them pretty busy, but you're right. I mean, these are one of the special forces of the fire service and they are trained to deal with these kinds of events and couldn't be more proud of them. They're going out the door to do what they do best and they've done in the past and I think they'll do a good job and we'll continue to augment them as necessary with additional resources or any specialized request that we can support with. Mark, thank you for your time. Happy to do it. If you'd like more information on the California USAR teams that are in Texas you can always find more on our website that is OESNews.com. For all of us at Cal OES News, I'm Brian May.