Washington’s 45-person task force will get ‘right to work’ in Hawaii for rescue, recovery mission

SEATTLE — The Washington State Task Force is deploying 45 people from Pierce and King Counties to help with search and rescue efforts on the island, after wildfires burned hundreds of buildings and killed dozens. Officials in Hawaii said they expect the death toll to rise.

“I’m ready to roll,” Ryan Nash, a task force leader and Seattle firefighter, said. “We’re anticipating getting right to work when we get there.”

The team is traveling with about 60,000 pounds worth of equipment.

“We have some structural specialists, rescue specialists, doctors, the typical team structure that we deploy with,” Tacoma firefighter and task force leader Todd Magliocca said.

This isn’t the first time the team has been sent to Maui. They were deployed there in 2018 for Hurricane Lane.

“One of which did encompass with Hurricane Lane and then it also had some of the wildfires that occurred there as well so we’ll be doing something similar to that,” Nash said.

There are also five K9 teams traveling to the island. Johanna Hauxen and her dog, Bax, are part of the team. Bax is a FEMA-certified human remains detection dog.

“They can do what nobody else can do,” Hauxen said. “They can use their nose to find people under a lot of debris and rubble and where we cannot see anything so we know where we need to start digging.”

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