Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— The Clay County Sheriff’s office sent 18 deputies and four 911 operators from the county’s emergency operations center Friday morning bound for southwest Florida to help with recovery efforts from Hurricane Ian.
Assistant Chief Scott Moreland told First Coast News reporter Leah Shields that the deployment will last a week and that some personnel traveling south have family and friends in the Ft. Myers area.
“Some of the members of our agency actually heading to Lee County have family members who reside in that area, so it is a little personal for them,” Moreland said. “They’re concerned about their own family members and want to go down there and make a difference and help out in that community as well.”
Camp Blanding is the temporary destination for National Guard personnel across the country enroute to the hurricane recovery area.
Major General Jim Eifert, the Adjutant General of the Florida National Guard, said during an Oct. 1 news conference that Brigadier General Sean Boyette is the Joint Task Force Florida Commander for the guard’s hurricane recovery effort.
“He’s been in the command-and-control center node up in Camp Blanding in North Florida,” Eiftert said from Ft. Myers, “controlling all of the resources throughout the state. Obviously, Lee County Collier and Charlotte have become a center of significant concern. We are continuing to migrate more forces down here. We currently have about 1,200 Florida National Guardsmen. We’ll probably be increasing that in the coming days to more than 2,000, again just to get that presence in the streets to make sure that there are no looting or crime waves that could be part of the natural disaster.”
Starlink techs head to Camp Blanding
A four-person communications team from Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Washington will make a stop in Camp Blanding on its way to assist with Hurricane Ian rescue efforts.
The team will provide technical assistance in deploying Starlink satellite communications terminals.
“We are happy to provide this critical capability to the first responders in Florida as they perform the important task of recovering after Hurricane Ian,” said Major General Bret Daugherty, the adjutant general, in a statement. “Washington State has successfully used this technology during wildfires, and it will be extremely useful to the mission.”
SpaceX deploys the Starlink satellite internet network.
