The eight-person team is made up of state and local volunteers and police. The team left Connecticut on Friday and is expected to stay in North Carolina for a week.
Jonathan Hartenbaum helped organize the team. He’s with the state’s Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division.
“They’re specially trained to do anything,” he said. “From responding to a structural collapse to swift water rescue, confined space rescue, wildland search. They’re a resource which can be called upon to assist."
Hartenbaum said the team's primary focus is to search riverbanks and piles of debris and to help people affected by road and bridge washouts.
“There are vehicles that were washed away, and they’re checking those vehicles to make sure nobody is inside of them,” he said. “There are people who are in their homes that were cut off from other parts of the towns, so they’re evacuating them at their request and taking them to a shelter.”
Connecticut also deployed a National Guard unit that departed for North Carolina last week.
