Valley emergency crews stepping up to help areas devastated by Beryl

HARLINGEN, Texas (ValleyCentral) — First responders in the Rio Grande Valley just learned they will be deploying to help Tropical Storm Beryl victims in the coming days.

Members of the South Texas Emergency Care Foundation received orders Monday night to deploy to Corpus Christi, then will be sent to NRG Stadium in Houston. Once there, they will find out their assignments.

They have prepared their medical gear to help mobile hospitals in impacted communities and assist in search and rescue operations.

Director of Transport Services for South Texas Emergency Care Foundation Rene Perez says they are also preparing staff to do logistics and paperwork. It is all part of the regional emergency management effort.

“We're gonna have ambulances, we're gonna have personnel, also ambulance stage managers, you know, field folks for the, for the mobile medical units for their mobile hospitals," Perez said. "So, we'll have a clinical people available for that as well.”

Perez says crews were deployed to the same areas after Hurricane Harvey struck in 2017.

The decision for deployment came at the state level as the Emergency Medical Task Force and the State Operation Center work together.

Once activated, they have 12 hours to prepare. They will then take vehicles like the ambulances needed to their destination.

“Depends on where the storm is, in this particular case, we probably get centralized and then from there, get our marching orders where they want us to go and then from there, we'll you know, we'll go where they tell us to go," he added.

Perez said the deployments usually last seven days.

He says others were ready to come help the Valley had Beryl continued its original path before it started drifting elsewhere.