 As Hurricane Dorian approached the Bahamas and U.S. coast, mutual aid response and recovery efforts were being coordinated nearly 3,000 miles away. Dorian made landfall as a Category 5 Hurricane in the Bahamas over Labor Day weekend, then downgraded to a Category 2 as it veered towards the East Coast. In response, Governor Gavin Newsom, through Cal OES, approved the deployment of five urban search and rescue task forces from Menlo Park, Sacramento, Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Diego, along with two water rescue teams from Los Angeles and Orange County. Just now, we re starting to receive the actual activation orders, and that s the approval and the transportation arrangements for these task forces. Each task force consists of 35 highly trained search and rescue specialists, including canines and medical personnel. Cal OES also deployed an Assistant Chief from the Special Operations Unit for coordination and to act as a state agency representative. One of the things that is done beforehand is an incident support team that specializes in urban search and rescue. They ve been on the grounds since last week, so they have that situational awareness, and as the storm dynamics change, they ll be coordinating with these urban search and rescue teams, so when they get on the ground, they can go to work right away in areas affected. Aside from California, the state of Florida also received USAR resources from 16 other states. Cal OES had initially agreed to send a 10-person incident management team to Florida, but those plans changed on the morning of their departure due to a change in the storm s direction. The states that are being affected by this hurricane, they re putting in requests for assistance across the United States, and Cal OES is responding to those requests for assistance and sending the personnel that we can send and still maintain operations here. For more on California s response to Hurricane Dorian, follow us on our blog at OESNews.com and be sure to check out our social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. For all of us here at Cal OES, I m Jonathan Goddell.