© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Intersection - Missouri Task Force One on Hurricane Harvey Mission to Texas

Credit Missouri Task Force One

Missouri Task Force One is an urban search and rescue team that responds to disasters around the country. There are just 28 such units nationwide, and the Missouri force is managed by the Boone County Fire Protection District. A Missouri Task Force One team recently returned to Columbia from Texas after helping with Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. 

Intersection's Sara Shahriari sat down with two members from the task force, Terry Cassil and Danny Mueller, to hear about their experiences. 

*Members of Missouri Task Force One traveled to Texas in late August to assist local authorities near Houston, Texas, following Hurricane Harvey. Other members of the task force later responded to Hurricane Irma in Puerto Rico. 

*Task force volunteers include firefighters, medical staff and engineers. 

*The team brings all its own equipment and enough supplies to be self-sustaining for 72 hours. The total equipment cache weighs more than 76,000 pounds. 

*"There were still locals there that were walking around in the streets, it was like they were lost," Terry Cassil said of residents in a heavily affected Texas community. "And you just can't imagine the stress level that must be going on with those folks to number one just make it through the storm then secondly to look around and say everything you have is just gone." 

Assistant producers for this show are Elena Rivera and Hannah Haynes. 

Sara Shahriari was the assistant news director at KBIA-FM, and she holds a master's degree from the Missouri School of Journalism. Sara hosted and was executive producer of the PRNDI award-winning weekly public affairs talk show Intersection. She also worked with many of KBIA’s talented student reporters and teaches an advanced radio reporting lab. She previously worked as a freelance journalist in Bolivia for six years, where she contributed print, radio and multimedia stories to outlets including Al Jazeera America, Bloomberg News, the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, Deutsche Welle and Indian Country Today. Sara’s work has focused on mental health, civic issues, women’s and children’s rights, policies affecting indigenous peoples and their lands and the environment. While earning her MA at the Missouri School of Journalism, Sara produced the weekly Spanish-language radio show Radio Adelante. Her work with the KBIA team has been recognized with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and PRNDI, among others, and she is a two-time recipient of funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.