TEMA commits National Guard, TWRA resources for relief
Around 400 soldiers were scheduled to deploy Friday to aid people in Louisiana and Mississippi. A water rescue team from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency with 20 trucks, 10 boats and 34 people also was traveling south to help with rescue efforts, said Donnie Smith, spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.
TEMA officials also are considering sending more Guard units south and getting proper credentials for law enforcement officers to travel to the Gulf Coast.
TEMA is organizing all official resources being sent to areas affected by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding in what Smith calls “a pretty tough logistics effort.”
“What we do is sort of weave all of them together into a blanket that can be used by the disaster area,” Smith told The Associated Press on Friday.
Tennesseans should not attempt to travel to the disaster areas on their own, because they likely won’t have access to the supplies and the credentials needed to access those areas, he said. TEMA provides relief teams with supplies they will need while in the disaster area, such as food, water and batteries.
“When you get down there, you can look around there, and see there’s nothing there,” Smith said.
The National Guard resources going to the Gulf Coast include:
— Soldiers from Murfreesboro’s 269th and Dickson’s 267th military police units of the 168th Military Police Battalion based in Lebanon.
— The 230th Engineer Battalion from Trenton, along with bulldozers, dump trucks, wreckers, fuel trucks and Humvees.
— Air traffic controllers from Smyrna and Nashville.
— Two UH-60 Blackhawk medical helicopters from the Knoxville-based 146th Medical Company to serve as air ambulances.