{City of Coral Springs}
By Bryan Boggiano
The city commission honored the Surfside Deployment Team Wednesday for their efforts following the condominium collapse on June 24.
The Surfside Deployment Team includes Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department members, the clinician response team, the peer support team, and FEMA Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Florida Task Force II.
Members responded to the tragedy in Surfside after Champlain Towers South partially collapsed just after 1 a.m. The disaster killed 98, injuring 11 others.
Michael McNally, fire department chief, said that in his 15 years in USAR, this was the first time that he participated in a mental health component in disaster recovery.
For McNally, that is why the immediate aid that peer support provided was crucial.
“When you’re going through something like that, It takes a toll,” he said. “If we can provide that immediate help to keep [our deployment team] on task, on mission, what we’re doing is providing them a safer operation.”
According to McNally, over 1,000 USAR members from the state and federal levels responded to Surfside for 29 days.
He recognized that the city played a big part in the search and recovery efforts, including finding and identifying each victim.
“Everybody here had a component in this,” he said, “Everybody here contributed to [the search and rescue effort’] and helped so many others throughout.”
The city honored the following:
Chris Bator
Kandice Oltz
Alicia Merritt
Ricardo Piloto
Steve Frey
Yair Soto
Danielle Corp
Ron Abou-Semaan
Jason Gonzalez
John Whalen
Michael McNally
Frank Babinec
Ron Perkins
Stacey Steinbaum
Becky Cheresnick
Sean Khan
Joe Russoniello
Sophia Moser
Stephanie Palmer
Michael Caldaro
Oscar Gomez
Jeff Hamberger
{City of Coral Springs}
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