Rescue crews and equipment from Milwaukee and the Great Lakes - Lake Michigan Sector of the U.S. Coast Guard are aiding in the rescue and recovery in South Texas.
At least 30 people, several of them from the Milwaukee station, are headed to or in Texas.
Lieutenant Commander Bryan Swintek said they started preparing last week to send people to the disaster zone.
On Friday, four air boats and two MH 65 helicopter’s started to make their way to the Houston area. The air boats are common in the Great Lakes region because they are often used for ice rescues.
Swintek says of the personnel headed south, “Some of them are going to help staff those air boats because there’s only a finite amount of them across the Coast Guard. So there is just fewer people that are trained and qualified to operate them. So that’s a great resource that we can provide from Wisconsin down to Texas.”
Monday, an additional seven “skiff ice” boats and 10 crew members headed to Texas. The small yellow inflatable boats are perfect for the types of rescues they are seeing because of Harvey.
“It’s designed to go from ice or hard water, ice as we call it, to open water and back on to ice. So it’s ideal for a situation for like an urban environment that is not supposed to be a maritime environment but it is now flooded” Swintek said.
Milwaukee Coast Guard officials say even though they have sent resources from the region to Texas, they are prepared for anything that may happen on the Great Lakes.
