As search and rescue crews dig through the rubble of a 12-story condo collapse near Miami, they face a race against time, holding out hope there are survivors buried underneath.
"That's a very hard event because of the amount of collapse they're dealing with there,” said Richard Wier.
Wier, a rescue team manager for Texas A&M Task Force 1, said crews have to work as quickly as possible while remaining cautious of a secondary collapse.
Wier has been working structural collapses like the one in Surfside for 20 years.
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Texas Task Force 1, out of College Station, is one of just 28 FEMA National Urban Search and Rescue teams that train for nationwide deployment.
Texas Task Force 2, which operates out of DFW, works collapses around the state.
"One of the first deployments that we made as the task force was for 9/11,” said Wier.
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The 70 plus person crew spent days combing through the rubble of the twin towers.
They've been deployed more than 100 times, including in the aftermath of the West fertilizer plant explosion and Hurricane Katrina.
The rescuers, searchers, structural engineers, medical staff and k9s train multiple times a year, knowing that each disaster will present its own challenges.
Still, Wier said their end goal is always the same.
"You think about a collapse. It's survivable voids that we're looking for. We're looking for areas that a person could still survive and be entombed if you will,” said Wier.
It's a situation people have been known to survive for days, providing hope for crews forging ahead in Florida.
Wier said Texas Task Force 1 and 2 both are staffed 24/7, 365 days a year.
