VANDALIA, Ohio — As the entire state of Florida braces for Hurricane Milton's impact, a word of warning came by the truckload Tuesday from Ohio Task Force 1 (OHTF-1) rescue crews returning from the Asheville, N.C. area.
Hurricane Milton is currently expected to make landfall Wednesday.
Within the last 24 hours, eight crew members from OHTF-1 returned home from two weeks of rescue efforts. Eighty-two members left for Orlando, Florida on Monday.
OHTF-1 members traveled to the area in a 16-vehicle convoy, arriving late in the evening.
"Milton's wind and pressure readings place the fast-evolving hurricane in the history books," the team said in a post on Facebook. "[Incident Transfer] Orders removed OH-TF1 from operations related to Hurricane Helene and assigned them to the State of Florida as Hurricane Milton strengthened significantly."
An OHTF-1 spokesperson said crews will assist local municipalities with emergency response efforts as well as search and rescue.
"Just general search and rescue operations ... and just trying to figure out what each county or jurisdiction needs from us," said Kevin Butsco, a firefighter volunteering with the task force.
Butsco deployed with 81 crew members and his search dog Sherwood on Sept. 24, ahead of Hurricane Helene.
"People's lives were just absolutely torn apart," he said. "Seeing their faces and what they experienced, and knowing they have to experience that again, it's just kind of like [reliving] what we experienced while we were there."
It's been 16 years since the OHTF-1 team has deployed on back-to-back missions, a spokesperson said.
"You don't normally have hurricanes here in the U.S. that come this close to each other at these levels, you know, category four and five, two weeks apart," said Evan Schumann, the OHTF-1 program manager. "But it is not something that has never, never happened."
For the latest on Hurricane Milton, click here.
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