Podcast Episode 52: Cal OES Team Returns from Hurricane Florence Assistance and Shares Experiences

Front Row, L-R: Mike Warren, Ron Williams, Anthony Zimmer

Back Row, L-R: Andy Langolf, Mark Ackerman, Megan Pappas

On September 12, 2018, Cal OES deployed emergency and incident management specialists to assist with emergency response efforts for Hurricane Florence. The team arrived in South Carolina prior to the storm’s landfall and immediately began work.

The 8-person team consisted of Megan Pappas, Mike Warren, Ron Williams, Anthony Zimmer, Mark Ackerman, Andy Langolf, Carly Landry and Drew Hammond. During the two-week deployment, California personnel will use their specialized emergency management operations skills to help officials as they respond to the impacts of Hurricane Florence. The eight-person Cal OES Incident Support Team has extensive emergency operations experience and has been involved in response and recovery efforts for several major disasters in California including wildfires, flooding, winter storms, the Oroville Dam Emergency Spillway Incident, earthquakes and drought.  Primary duties included the support of Logistics and Points of Distribution (POD) coordination in Columbia, S.C. at the State Emergency Operations Center.

In this episode, which is Part-1 of 2-Parts, each of these team members recount the experiences of their deployment, what worked, what didn’t, their objectives and how they met them despite the pressures from a fast-approaching hurricane, working in a strange place with unfamiliar people and methods and much more.

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