Photo By Sgt. Juanita Philip | Kirk Henderson, Service Branch director for the Incident Management Assistance Team,...... read more read more
Hurricane Irma strengthened to a Category 5 storm on Tuesday, and the Virgin Islands braced for the worst. Over the Labor Day holiday weekend military and civilian personnel set up for operations at the Virgin Islands National Guard to assist and support the territory.
Personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived during the weekend to set up support operations to sustain VING and other territorial agencies before, during and after the storm.
“We have 12 on our team and we’re augmented by Defense Coordinating Elements and certain emergency service functions, we have about 27 personnel on the ground[on both St. Thomas and St. Croix],” said Kirk Henderson, Service Branch director for the Incident Management Assistance Team, FEMA Region II out of New York.
“Should the worst happen, we are the initial reach of federal response back to the U.S. mainland.”
Henderson explained that support has already been established even though the hurricane is still more than 12 hours away.
“We’ve already pushed commodities here to the island- food and water through contracts for additional support including disaster assistance.”
In an emergency situation such as this, the VING has two task force that is activated; Task Force Alpha on St. Croix and Task Force Bravo on St. Thomas from the 104th Troop Command Battalion And the 786th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion respectively.
“Our mission as Task Force Alpha is to conduct emergency response operations in support of Joint Force Headquarters, Virgin Islands, and the local/territorial government in order to save lives, alleviate suffering and protect property throughout the St. Croix area of operations,” said Lt. Col. Mike Navarro, commander of the 104th Trp. Cmd. Bn., VING.
“We are prepared to support Task Force Bravo in the St. Thomas area of operations as well,” he added.
In addition to being the battalion commander, Navarro is also the Task Force Alpha commander.
“Task Force Alpha prepared for the storm by alerting our personnel and exercising our emergency alert rosters.”
He also spoke at length on the task force’s responsibilities after the storm.
“We are prepping our equipment for use in support of post-landfall assessments,” Navarro stated.
“Based on that we will move forward and carry out in support of the territory of the Virgin Islands any request for support by VITEMA [Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency] and or the governor of the Virgin Islands.”
According to the National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Irma had maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour and gusts up to 220 mph before 2 p.m. EST, Tuesday.
As of Monday, the governors of the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Florida had declared state of emergencies in their respective states or territories in
| Date Taken: | 09.05.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 09.08.2017 14:36 |
| Story ID: | 247486 |
| Location: | VIRGIN ISLANDS, US |
| Web Views: | 163 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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