Virginia Task Force 1 just returned from flood-ravaged Texas, and what they witnessed will leave you speechless. Homes torn apart, lives changed forever, and stories of survival that hit hard. 💔
Virginia Task Force 1 returned to the D.C. region Monday, two weeks after getting deployed to Texas to help with the response to this month’s deadly floods.
Kristi Bartlett, a canine search specialist, said there were about 60 miles of shoreline that “got flooded out, so there was a really long stretch of an area that they were trying to find anybody’s loved ones, to try to get them back to their families.”
The group included three canines from Fairfax County and a handler from Maryland, Bartlett said. They teamed up with other first responders from Arizona and Oklahoma.
The team’s days started with a meetup at 6:30 a.m., and it began searching as soon as the sun came out. They stopped around 3 p.m. and then gave the dogs baths, because they were in and out of the water and mud. Veterinarians evaluated the dogs daily to make sure they were hydrated and that their pads held up.
The responders mainly helped with search and rescue in Kerr County over two and a half weeks, Bartlett said.
“The area we were searching, it was a lot of river stone, so the dogs were, a lot of abrasions and stuff on their feet just from being in and out of the water and all the stone on their feet,” Bartlett said.
The dogs “did make some finds,” and anything discovered was turned over to local police departments. Because of how quickly the water came up, Bartlett said it was different from the team’s deployment to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. More than 100 people died in the Texas floods, The Associated Press reported.
“Most people that talk about their stories, they said that they were sleeping and then woke up to either their camper moving or hearing furniture in their homes tipping over,” Bartlett said. “And by the time that they woke up, it was already too late, and they were stuck in the floodwaters.”
Bartlett said there’s still a lot of cleanup that needs to happen, but “it’s just hard to comprehend how much water passed through that area.”
Each time the group is deployed, Bartlett said she reflects on possible improvements that could help the unit after the next disaster. In this case, regarding the canine, “I’m definitely going to get something to help treat her pads a little more to try to keep her working as long as we can,” Bartlett said.