Hurricane Irma: Fairfax County Team Deployed

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA—One day after family and colleagues welcomed home first responders returning from the flooded Houston area, the Virginia Task Force 1 has been activated to help with Hurricane Irma.

80 members are heading out to Alabama and will move to where they're needed when the storm hits. The team will include swiftwater trained personnel with equipment, a search and rescue team and rescue dogs.

14 of these first responders helped with Hurricane Harvey rescues in Texas. The swiftwater-trained team rescued residents stranded in flooded homes and went back for residents' pets, medications and other belongings. First responders told WTOP they were shocked by the amounts of flooding but said the residents were very cooperative.

“The biggest thing was the amount of water in some of these neighborhoods. … There was actual swift water, which we could compare to Great Falls, in apartment complexes,” Capt. Reggie Wadley of VA-TF1 told WTOP.

While it’s still too early to tell the precise impacts Irma might have on Florida or the United States, authorities are preparing for the worst. The potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm could follow a path that will bring it along the Florida coast over the weekend and into next week.

Watch: Another Powerful Hurricane Is Taking Aim At The US

Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency on Monday for all 67 counties, and residents of the Florida Keys were ordered to evacuate. Miami-Dade County was also considering evacuations while the county's schools announced plans to close on Thursday and Friday.

The VA-TF1 team left Fairfax County around 11 a.m. Wednesday and is expected to arrive in Alabama Thursday.

"We are really ready...to be in place in Alabama and to move from there when this storm hits," said Richard Bowers, Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Chief in a VA-TF1 update video Wednesday.

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Image via Fairfax County Fire and Rescue