Following the landfall of Hurricane Helene, and receipt of a request for help, a team of Ohio 911 dispatchers, radio technicians, and support personnel are heading to North Carolina to lend assistance.

Ohio TERT, part of the national Telecommunicator Emergency Response Taskforce, are a group of public safety personnel from across Ohio who have volunteered for a 14-day deployment to assist local 911 centers whose own personnel have been on duty without break since Helene’s historic rainfall caused catastrophic flooding to interior sections of the U.S. Southeast.

The 19-member team is comprised of members from across the state, and includes personnel from dispatch centers in Strongsville, Urbana, Bedford, Westlake, North Lawrence, Butler and Franklin Counties, and the State of Ohio. They will be assigned to work shifts at centers in the hardest hit communities of Western North Carolina. There, the team will assist in handling the crushing call volume, provide relief to allow home agency personnel time to assess facility damage, and address their own home situations, which were not immune from Helene’s impact. Additionally, radio engineers from Ohio MARCS will lend assistance with stabilizing radio infrastructure and assist in repair operations, where appropriate.

Ohio TERT Chair Nick DiCicco, Director at Chagrin Valley Dispatch near Cleveland, said that Ohio TERT is deploying to do their part to help. “The devastation across Western North Carolina is incomprehensible. We are just doing our part to help where we can.” TERT Team Leader Johnna Sells, from Franklin County Emergency Management and Homeland Security, added, “We’re doing what we can to help our peers. This job is tough enough, and much more so during disasters. This is our chance to show up for each other.”