When one mission ended, another began. For the past 14 days, a team led by a North Texas fire chief and his team has moved from one disaster to the next across Texas. “We tend to be the tip of the spear; we plunge in because of the skill set that we have and the boats and the people we have, and we can get right in the middle of the emergency and start acting, and this was absolutely that case,” said Gene Senter, assistant chief with the Richardson Fire Department. Senter is also a leader with Texas Task Force 2, an elite urban search and rescue team called when disasters overwhelm local resources. During a 14-day deployment, his team has been sent wherever Texas needed them most. First, a tornado response in San Antonio. Then, the deadly Hill Country floods. “It was a very vigorous rainstorm, so those first eight hours, many, many callouts, many checks on people,” Senter said. From there, he was sent to the Texas border, coordinating teams and resources along 120 miles of the Rio Grande River. “We used blue painters’ tape to tape sheets of paper to the wall, and that became our EOC,” said Senter. Next, it was Corpus Christi to help respond to Tropical Storm Bertha. Now, he’s back in the Hill Country for secondary searches of flood-impacted areas. “We target those areas just to make sure that, now that the water has settled, there wasn’t anybody that was missed,” said Senter. From the first rescue to the final search, for Senter, it’s about seeing the job through, a responsibility that he says keeps his team going. “We want to help people, and I have to say, this is such an incredibly good and satisfying way to do that,” Senter said. ...read more read less