Two Oklahoma swift-water rescue teams headed for New Mexico on Sunday morning, sent by Gov. Kevin Stitt to help communities dealing with intense flooding. The 12-member Oklahoma Task Force 1 deployment, drawn from crews in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, is expected to remain in New Mexico for up to six days.
Stitt announced that the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management was dispatching the teams after New Mexico's Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management formally requested the help, according to KOCO. “These Task Force 1 teams have the training, experience and equipment to help communities respond when they need it most,” Stitt said, adding that Oklahoma will keep working with New Mexico and its partners through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact to provide support as long as needed.
Annie Mack Vest said the Oklahoma Task Force 1 teams are trained and equipped for specialized rescue operations, underscoring why the state is repeatedly tapped when flooding overwhelms neighboring communities. The mission is being carried out under EMAC, the interstate framework that lets states share personnel, equipment and resources across state lines. Under that compact, the requesting state directs the mission while the assisting state, in this case Oklahoma, maintains accountability for its deployed resources, according to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.
A Well-Worn Mutual Aid Pipeline
EMAC has served as the backbone of the country's mutual-aid system since it was ratified and signed into federal law in 1996 under Public Law 104-321, per the compact's own account of its history. It's described as an all-hazards, all-disciplines system that lets states send personnel, equipment and commodities to help with response and recovery once a governor has declared an emergency or disaster.
Oklahoma has leaned on that framework often. The state has sent personnel to support EMAC requests in California, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina and now New Mexico, according to the Tulsa World. Just this past June, the state sent two Type III swift-water rescue teams to Texas for flood response, a deployment that also drew 12 Oklahoma Task Force 1 members from the Tulsa and Oklahoma City areas along with boats, trailers and other equipment, staged in Bryan and expected to last up to nine days depending on conditions.
A Pattern of Mutual Aid
A Texas deployment also involved a 24-member Oklahoma team, with the mission expected to last up to a week. Oklahoma has also sent water-rescue teams to Texas.
Whether this latest New Mexico trip runs the full six days or wraps sooner will likely depend on how conditions on the ground evolve, much as it has in past deployments to Texas. For now, Oklahoma's responders are on the road, part of a mutual-aid system built specifically so that one state's disaster doesn't have to be faced alone.
