PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The members of FEMA's Pennsylvania Task Force 1 are returning from Florida after days of Hurricane Ian rescue and recovery efforts in the Fort Myers Beach area. Philadelphia Fire Department Captain Ken Pagurek, who was assigned as the task force’s supervisor, spoke with KYW Newsradio about what they encountered.
Pagurek says the task force is among the most highly trained rescue teams in the country, and they can adapt to any situation. In this case, that included environmental dangers such as alligators and snakes in addition to deadly flood conditions.
KYW Newsradio’s Michelle Durham asked Pagurek about his impression of the storm surge devastation he and his team encountered.
Pagurek: I drove the island when I got on it and immediately noticed that there was wave action on the buildings and water lines upwards of 20-plus feet. It's not a big island. It's a barrier island — 7 miles long, roughly a half-mile to three-quarters of a mile wide. And that much water — 3,500 structures and not a single one hadn't been impacted by the storm surge.
Durham: The scope is just absolutely tremendous. What did you observe, in terms of recoveries?
Pagurek: Mother Nature can be really mean. People who chose not to evacuate — we had eyewitness reports of them being swept out of their properties. One in particular … the individual had been essentially carried by the storm surge, I would say, another half-mile to three-quarters of a mile into a mangrove along with pieces of their house.
There is some back story there. I think that there was debate, whether the husband got rescued in the early stages, and she was sheltering in place in a bathtub. We got to know the individual's name. The person became a priority for us to find.
[She] got located by a drone actually that was surveying the mangroves. They sent us the coordinates, and we were able to put boats in the water and physically do a de-layering operation. With urban search and rescue, what we typically do is deal with buildings that are on the ground. This one here, they had to do the de-layering operation via boat and float apart the pieces of the house … to get to this individual.
Durham: What people don't realize who haven't been to the Fort Myers area, or Cape Coral, is it is like the Jersey Shore. They are all barrier islands with a bridge on and off. And you look around and you realize that this could happen anywhere. Because I think everyone thinks in the back of their mind that it can’t happen there.
Pagurek: Yep. There is no question. I don't think the people in Fort Myers were … ill prepared, but I believe the storm was forecasted to go north. These storms, it’s not an exact science, and they kind of do what they wanted to do.
If people are telling you to leave, there's probably a good reason to leave. You know, its a decision to make. And it's troubling to pack up and leave your belongings behind and possibly come back to nothing. But everyone's life is worth something. And the more people that choose to shelter in place makes it more complicated for us as rescuers to come in after the storm and find people.