Second Incident Team Returns, Oct. 29

The Office of State Fire Marshal’s (OSFM) second Incident Management Team (IMT) is returning home from Florida Saturday, October 27th after a 14-day assignment.  They should arrive in Oregon Saturday afternoon.  Incident Commander Ted Kunze along with the combined OSFM and Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) IMT’s  mission was in Bay County in the Florida Panhandle, where they integrated with IMTs from Mississippi and Florida.  The unified IMT provided leadership to the county for emergency management response by deploying resources for search and rescue. The team then shifted into recovery mode by helping residents obtain transitional housing and getting kids back into schools. Incident Commander Ted Kunze said, “OSFM and ODF working in unified command along with the IMTs from other states optimized our resources and created a robust IMT, which allowed us to get started quickly and efficiently on our search and rescue mission.  I feel we all represented Oregon very well.” In addition to all of Oregon’s support, the team received appreciative and encouraging words from many Floridians, as well as U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and FEMA Director Brock Long. Although the recovery efforts posed some challenges, our team describes their mission as very inspiring and humbling. We are very proud of the work done by both of our teams in helping Floridians put the pieces back together again.