West Michigan firefighters return from helping in Texas floods
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — It’s been a busy two weeks for Michigan Task Force 1.
Some of its members attended the Midwest Fire Rescue Expo Wednesday at DeVos Place, just a few days after returning from a deployment in Texas.
“I’m kind of like a proud father,” said Jack Johnson, deputy chief of operations with the Grand Rapids Fire Department.
Six members of GRFD are members of MI-TF1, a team of approximately 168 of Michigan’s most highly trained emergency service personnel, who are called to assist with state and federal disasters or emergencies.
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“They take the best of the best and then they hone their skills on a higher level and then those guys bring those skills back and then train up the rest of the team that we have here,” Johnson said. “The combined expertise of those three members is definitely felt throughout the department. They’re all leaders.”
Captain Josh Veldkamp is one of those leaders.
“I’ve had a passion for the tech rescue side of the fire response and rescue responses and being offered a spot on the task force and being sponsored by the city of Grand Rapids is kind of a great opportunity where we can meld those passions with our department and then with the state,” Veldkamp said.
He was one of three GRFD members who responded to assist with swift water rescue efforts in storm-ravaged Texas. A total of 17 MI-TF1 members were deployed.
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“There’s a lot of prepping right, you gotta mentally prep, make sure the family is OK for the duration that you’re going to be gone,” Veldkamp explained, adding that the team also had to make sure the equipment was ready and secure for a 20-hour convoy to Texas.
It’s a big sacrifice and the longest Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) to date. Initially, the deployment was supposed to be seven days, but MI-TF1 ended up spending two weeks in Texas.
“When we were there, we were able to deliver humanitarian supplies whether that’s water and (Meals Ready-to-Eat). We rescued some people’s pets that were left in other structures when they evacuated, and just pour into the local jurisdictions and the other people in the towns that we were serving,” Veldkamp said.
Veldkamp has also assisted MI-TF1 with the Gaylord tornado, flooding in Midland, and Hurricane Dorian in Florida and said he’s grateful for the additional training the task force offers and the opportunity to use those skills to help in his community and beyond.
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“It kind of works hand in hand so that state resource that’s here can help the local department that’s on the other side and it all just works together seamlessly. We’re able to take that back to our local side, train our other members, respond to other community members that are here, so it’s a really good partnership,” Veldkamp said.
It also gives those local departments some piece of mind.
“It really makes myself and the fire chief proud to know that we’ve got representatives from the city of Grand Rapids down there helping out our neighbors,” Johnson said. “It means a lot from the perspective of an operations chief in a department our size because there may be a time down the road if we have a catastrophic event happen here that we really can’t necessarily staff up for, that we know that help will be available to us as well.”
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