The Past, Present, and Future of South Carolina Task Force 1: Part 4

December 19, 2024

The reality of SC-TF1 response in the face of disaster – Hurricane Helene

The Past, Present, and Future of South Carolina Task Force 1: Part 4
The reality of SC-TF1 response in the face of disaster – Hurricane Helene

The active 2024 hurricane season has kept South Carolina Task Force 1 busy. The team was activated in August in response to Tropical Cyclone Debby and again in late September for Hurricane Helene.

Tropical Cyclone Debby left many communities in South Carolina hurting; SC-TF1 aided local resources with water rescues and logistics support. Berkeley, Dorchester, Charleston, and Colleton counties saw enormous amounts of rain from Debby and high floodwaters due to the rain and rising tides. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources reports that Debby’s peak rainfall in South Carolina of 22.02” inches near Moncks Corner in Berkeley County ranks second among rainfall from tropical cyclones in South Carolina’s history.

A few weeks after Tropical Cyclone Debby and before areas had the opportunity to fully recover from its impact, Hurricane Helene arrived in South Carolina in the middle of the night as a tropical storm. In its devastating aftermath, Hurricane Helene left millions without power, flooded entire towns, destroyed roads and bridges, swept away homes and vehicles, and claimed hundreds of lives in the Southeast. The damage to the Upstate took most by surprise and was almost unbelievable.

“Hurricanes should not hit mountains, that’s a bad recipe,” South Carolina Task Force 1 Leader Andrew (Mac) MacIver said of Hurricane Helene. “When they had the call to come to this thing, I said, ‘Alright, I’m gonna be gone for 2 or 3 days, we’ll probably put some boats in the water and move some people around but it’s not gonna be a big deal, it’s just gonna be a rainstorm…’ This one was different.”

“Very much taken by surprise by the storm,” MacIver continues, “We were really looking at not really doing anything.”

South Carolina Task Force 1 deployed to Pickens County as a Type 4 team and arrived the day before Hurricane Helene made landfall. For a brief period, the team waited for their orders.

“We got up there the night before the storm hit, and then our first call for work was for boat rescue work around 4:15 in the morning I think was our first call, and we did not stop that first day until 3 o’clock the next morning,” MacIver recalls. “That was our biggest day. It was just one thing after another.”

MacIver notes the geography of Pickens County offered unique challenges, stating, “When they [trees] came down, they were stacked like a logging truck had stacked them, they were just one on top of the other, so it was just really crazy with how the landscape made it so much more challenging.”

It was a bigger job than anticipated and immediately became clear that they needed more manpower. By the end of the first day, Task Force 1 transformed into a Type 3 team.

“Task Force 1 initially deployed as a Type 4 US&R team with swift water capabilities. We upstaffed it to a Type 3 which is 45 personnel,” State Fire Marshal Jonathan Jones details. “At one point, all six of the South Carolina Urban Search and Rescue teams were stood up.”

Task Force 1 extended their deployment because of the severity of the damage. MacIver recalls the team’s efforts leading up to the day before deployment ended, saying, “All the way up until Thursday, which was our second to last operational period, we were still getting to people who’d had no contact with anyone yet. It was crazy.”

“I would rank this one as top of the list as far as the amount of work that we did, how much we accomplished… it was just one thing after another. I’ve never had a deployment that’s been that much work at once,” MacIver states. Despite the seemingly never-ending workload, MacIver’s role as Task Force Leader means he has to keep a good eye on the team’s health and safety.

“I had to stop them quite often to make sure they were getting enough rest,” he says. “What they’re doing is dangerous, they’re running chainsaws, they’re running heavy equipment. We’d rented like four tractors to help move stuff, and so as the time goes on, I’m like, ‘Hey, we have to shut down our operations earlier and earlier every day to make sure no one gets hurt.’ That’s a tough thing to do with that group because they would work through the night, they would just keep going.”

Brian Archibald, Emergency Response Task Force Section Chief overseeing SC-HART and SC-TF1 operations and an original member of Task Force 1, summed up the team, stating, “Don’t ever tell us no… The level of enthusiasm our people have is infectious.”

The deployment to Pickens County for Hurricane Helene was long and more difficult than initially thought to be, but Task Force 1 and the regional teams are ready, trained, and prepared.

“You need a lot of manpower to make these things happen, and you need a lot of resources to make it happen,” MacIver states. “It’s very important the team is well funded and taken care of.”

South Carolina Emergency Response Task Force Chief Chad Beam echoes MacIver’s sentiments on the work ethic of Task Force 1 members and the significance of funding the team.

“It’s the people that as soon as we get there, they’re willing to get out the truck and just go to work until we say stop, and then they’ll keep going, so then sometimes we have to say, ‘Hey, we really need you to stop, take a break,’” Chief Beam says. “The biggest challenge until now has been funding. Our biggest challenge post-funding is just making sure we have the support we need when we go out the door.”