WASHINGTON - As of 8 a.m. today, 430 National Guardmembers had been activated in response to a winter storm that left as much as two feet of snow in some areas and prompted six governors to activate their National Guard.
Guardmembers from Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Virginia are providing equipment and manpower support to civilian authorities conducting emergency operations throughout their respective states.
“The key to rapid response for this event is having personnel in place and ready to respond,” the joint operations officer for the Virginia Guard, Army Col. Gerald Catrett, said. “We are staging personnel, vehicles and equipment … to support missions such as transportation through heavy snow.”
Massachusetts Guardsmen are assisting local police to evacuate some homes affected by coastal flooding caused by the storms.
Maryland Guardsmen are calling on the lessons they learned during the “snowpocalypse” earlier in 2010.
“During the blizzards of earlier 2010, we helped deliver babies and rescue motorists on the highway,” Army Maj. Gen. James Adkins, the adjutant general of Maryland said. “Who knows what the next call may be.”
Virginia Guardmembers are assisting Virginia State Police and local emergency response organizations in the Eastern Shore by conducting Humvee-mounted route patrols to assess road conditions and assist stranded motorists.
At about 4:45 a.m. today, they transported one adult and two children stranded on a side street and were also scheduled to transport emergency services personnel to work at a local hospital.
At about 6:30 a.m. they also rescued three citizens trapped in their car for more than four hours and transported them to a local shelter for further assistance.