DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — The rising floodwaters from Florence mean new challenges for the Federal Emergency Management Agency teams leading the massive federal response.
Channel 2 investigative reporter Aaron Diamant visited the FEMA regional response coordination center in DeKalb County Monday.
FEMA leaders warned the danger is far from over.
Diamant watched as they coordinated countless missions inside the storm zone, from pre-staging critical resources to search and rescue teams.
“What we’re in right now is a classic flood fight,” FEMA deputy response division director Glen Sachtleben said.
With floodwaters from Florence still rising across the Carolinas, it’s still all-hands-on-deck inside FEMA’s regional response coordination center, where teams have spent nearly a week quarterbacking the massive federal response.
“They are trying to get the search and rescue assets out exactly where they’re needed to respond to those isolated areas that people need rescue, need evacuation, and to get food and commodities and medical supplies where they need to go,” Sachtleben said.
They are working to stay two steps ahead of Mother Nature as dramatic new images from the storm zone roll in.
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“It’s tough. You have to take a certain amount of risk that where you put something is going to be reachable, but to get around that, we’re duplicating and in fact triplicating, if that’s a word, to put resources where they need to be just in case the first two go down and we can’t get at them,” Sachtleben said.
Sachtleben told us while the men and women in the room use advanced computer models and predictive analytics, they don’t lose sight of the stakes.
“It’s always serious to the person on ground, so we’ve got to do our utmost to make sure that we’re responding to their individual needs,” Sachtleben said.
Sachtleben warned while the storm has passed, the threat remains real.
“It’s going to be a long, long fight and some areas like South Carolina have yet to really realize the type of water that could come down into that state as this storm moves up into Pennsylvania and so forth all that water has to come back down,” Sachtleben said.
With some parts of the Carolinas still under evacuation orders, the work for FEMA is far from over.
They said the coordination center will remain open 24-7 for as long as necessary.