Oklahomans Head To Florida To Help With Hurricane Recovery

Two Red Cross emergency response vehicles are leaving for Florida  Monday.

The vehicles are from Guthrie and McAlester. Red Cross officials said they will join the nine Red Cross volunteers that deployed last week.

More volunteers will be leaving soon.

Mary Jane Coffman, with the American Red Cross, said this is what they do. They work together to help each other out.

“So even this spring when we had the flooding and the tornadoes, we had other volunteers that came from other parts of the country to help us,” Coffman said. “And this is our chance to go and help out other parts of the country.”

Oklahoma City Firefighters, that are part of Task Force One, are in Orlando.

Right now they’re at the Orange County Convention Center, teaming up with other first responders and FEMA.

The crews said they’ll stay at the convention center until they’re deployed for search and rescue missions if Hurricane Dorian makes landfall.

Scientists with the University of Oklahoma and NOAA are also heading to the East Coast, to study data to help them better understand hurricanes.

The scientists said they hope this data will help them research cost-effective building codes to prevent damage from future storms.