HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — Ten Henrico County firefighters arrived in Orlando, Florida on Wednesday to help with relief efforts during and after Hurricane Helene.
The firefighters are some of 80 members with FEMA’s Virginia Task Force 2 Urban Search and Relief Team based out of Hampton Roads.
Mark Cumashot has served as a FEMA rescue team manager since Henrico Fire joined the Task Force 12 years ago.
He is also Henrico Fire’s assistant chief of special operations and spoke to CBS 6 on a brief stop in Georgia.
“We always still have work at home. We still have our friends and family at home, but one of the things that we try and do is we also evenly distribute our impact on our home department, so we're not impacting one shift more than the other,” Cumashot described.
The team will join FEMA’s disaster relief headquarters at an Orlando convention center as they prepare supplies and logistics.
They plan to respond to stranded families or people trapped in floodwaters, among other rescue efforts.
They are prepared to stay in Florida for about two weeks.
“We're here representing the county and representing Task Force 2. We’re going to do our best to provide the best service to those in need down here in Florida,” Cumashot stated.
Hurricane Helene is strengthening as it moves across the eastern Gulf of Mexico toward a forecast Thursday evening or early Friday morning landfall over Florida's Big Bend Coast and is "expected to bring catastrophic winds and storm surge to the northeastern Gulf Coast," the National Hurricane Center said early Thursday.
The American Red Cross has sent 10 volunteers from Virginia to Florida to help with relief efforts, according to spokesperson Jonathan McNamara.
The volunteers will join nearly 350 others with dozens of trucks full of relief supplies.
“We are prepared to open dozens of shelters across areas that are in the path of the storm, as well,” McNamara said. "It's your neighbors. here in the community that answers the call for the Red Cross to go to deploy for potentially up to three weeks at a time."
In the next few days and weeks, the Red Cross will go directly into impacted neighborhoods to conduct mobile feeding, distributing disaster relief supplies, cleanup kits, disaster mental health and first aid.
Central Virginia's own Mary Davis-Barton left from Richmond to Tallahassee, Florida on Wednesday.
She is no stranger to giving up her time to give to others, as she has been a volunteer with the American Red Cross for nearly two decades.
“We go out into the community. We go door to door. We go block to block to let them know we are there," she said. "Sometimes they just want to listen and have you give them a hug - and not feel like they are on their own."
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
