Validating the state name that Tennesseans have long been known for, citizens across the Volunteer State snapped into action Tuesday and Wednesday.
As the state continues to come to terms with Tuesday’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, its citizens have responded by donating blood and money across Tennessee and volunteering their help in the search and rescue effort.
Tennessee Task Force One, one of 28 federal rescue task forces operated under the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has sent 95 Memphis-area trained volunteers to Washington, D.C., armed with sophisticated rescue equipment.
“Our purpose is to go in after a building collapses to determine who is in the building and where they are, and then we get them out, whether they’re alive or not,” said Joe Lowry, emergency planning officer for the Memphis Emergency Management Agency.
Tennessee Task Force One, which was also deployed to Louisiana in 1998 to search buildings destroyed by hurricanes, is made up of a trained platoon of doctors, nurses, engineers, firefighters and other rescue personnel, according to Lowry.
Since all air traffic was grounded when the task force departed on Tuesday, it was bussed to the Washington, D.C., area before being likely divided into smaller groups and then sent to New York City, according to Shane Walker, watch commander for the Memphis Fire Department.
Freightliners have volunteered their services to carry some of the rescue equipment and relief supplies.
The equipment includes advanced rescue tools, like heat-sensitive cameras, diamond-tipped impact wrenches and SOLAS, a fiberoptic system designed to locate survivors in collapsed buildings.
SOLAS uses fiberoptic cameras to snake through cracks in crumbled concrete or underneath immovable fallen structures to seek bodies.
Cecil Whaley, director of plans for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, said Tennessee Task Force One’s rescue equipment cost around $3 million, which was raised half through federal funds and half by volunteer contributions.
Rescue teams typically stay at a disaster scene for 10-12 days, until they are “too exhausted to stand,” Lowry said.
Relief teams are sent after that time, and occasionally, the first set of teams has to go back a second time.
The Mid-South chapter of the American Red Cross sent two volunteers, a husband-and-wife team, to New York City around 6 p.m. on Sept. 11.
B. Scott Duke, director of communications for the Mid-South chapter of the American Red Cross, said the couple were possibly just the first of many volunteers to be sent north.
Pending further orders from emergency management teams, the American Red Cross could send many more volunteers to set up shelter and provide staples for stranded victims.
“It’s a wait-and-see thing,” Duke said.
“When the dust clears, that’s when the Red Cross springs into action.”
A “mental health expert” from the American Red Cross went to a “prominent local business” Tuesday to counsel employees who have family members who work in the World Trade Center, according to Duke.
People desiring pyschological counseling in disaster situations are free to contact the American Red Cross.
Statewide, officials have begun bracing for the possibility of attacks in Tennessee.
Whaley said the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency had activated security procedures by noon Tuesday to protect operations crucial to Tennessean government and daily life, including government facilities and water and power supplies.
Governor Don Sundquist issued a statement Tuesday saying the state has “moved into a heightened state of alert.”
Officials within the Governor’s office would not go into details about the emergency plans for security reasons.
Lowry said the Memphis Emergency Management Agency also has implemented a plan to protect Memphis.
“We set up perimeters in several places, had dogs in town and police crews on the bridges,” Lowry said.
“We have several locations in Memphis we consider special. We’re doing what we can without going overboard.”
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, one of the largest burn treatment centers in the nation, has been asked by the American Burn Association how many burn patients the hospital could accommodate, according to spokesman Clinton Colmenares.
The largest burn treatment center in the nation is in Manhattan, and one of the largest in nearby New Jersey, Colmenares said.
The Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville can take 24 burn patients, while the two in New York and New Jersey can take about 70 each.
“I think there’s a pretty good chance we’ll get patients from the D.C. area, maybe not direct victims from the attacks but overflow patients [from other accidents],” Colmenares said. Colmenares said staff members who live near the hospital were put on standby Tuesday, and that staff members at work are operating as normal.
