INDIANAPOLIS — For the past two weeks, Indiana Task Force 1 deployed dozens of specialized crew members to Kentucky, performing rescues and searches and assisting local authorities overwhelmed by the flooding.
“Pictures don’t do it justice," said Jay Settergren, an Indianapolis Fire Department battalion chief and deployment task force leader. "Those folks will working for quite a while to get everything back to where they can live back in there.”
At least 38 people have died since flash flooding swept through regions of eastern Kentucky, stranding thousands and leaving many families with damaged or destroyed homes.
With continued rain and challenges for locals dealing with the destruction, they say the problems brought on by this flooding are far from over in Kentucky.
"I haven't seen any damage like that before in the 25 years I've been with this team," Settergren said.
After a grueling 14 days deployed in the region, the Indiana Task Force 1 was back home in Indiana Thursday evening, but the damage and destruction they came to help residents with is sticking with the team.
"It's heartbreaking, you know, but also shocking. You think about tornadoes and stuff, this was basically seeing the tornado basically wind along the river. You know, debris was 20-30 feet in the air. Seeing people's family pictures 20 feet up in a tree somewhere, it kind of brought it home," said Kevin Jones, a special operations chief at IFD.
Jones and his crew were focused on water search and rescues, he said, but the changing weather and debris in the water made conditions hazardous.
“It’s moving water, it’s debris. There was time where there was telephone poles or washing machines or doors, all sorts of debris that people don’t normally think about but when you have a major flood like this, all that stuff ends up in the water. So that was something our people had to navigate around," Jones said.
"Unfortunately, when we got down there, the survivability rate with the flood was low, but we were still hopeful for that. But the importance of the rescue crews being down there and finding any of the missing, bringing closure to those families is extremely important to everyone involved," Jones added.
“We assisted a few people, we did some rescues in the very beginning. A lot of it is the primary searching, going back through a lot of the areas that were devastated. We went back and marked the structures that were damaged, we searched and made sure those people were accounted for. We were looking for up to I think there were 40 or 50 missing in the very beginning, we got it down to about two,” said Settergren.
After a tough two weeks, the 59-person team was demobilized Thursday along with other federal crews, according to Settergren. But with uncertain weather ahead, he said it will take time before eastern Kentucky can even begin to recover.
Settergren said he's glad that he and the team could be there and help for as long as they could, and feeling grateful that he and the rest of Task Force 1 are back home safely once again.
"I think everybody's looking forward to getting in their own bed, giving their families a hug and just kind of relaxing for a couple of days," Settergren said.
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