CLEVELAND — On his eighth hurricane deployment and over his 22nd year as a Bedford firefighter, Brian Harting witnessed some of the worst damages he has ever seen in Southwest Florida.
“Just to see the magnitude, a lot of wind damage, a lot damaged structures, the biggest things we saw was due to the storm surge. Some of the two-story homes we found easily had water 10 to 12 feet up,” said Harting. “People were reporting they were on their second floor and they had water coming through the floor vents.”
Harting was among roughly 80 people from Ohio’s Task Force One deployed to Florida to help with recovery and rescue efforts after Hurricane Ian pummeled Florida.
Harting said he was in some of the hardest hit areas, include Fort Myers Beach.
Countless hours of work, to help people who are now facing thousands of dollars in damages.
“Our hearts goes out to them, it’s a long rebuilding process, they lost their belongings, personal artifacts, family members, things like that but we train continuously for these types of missions,” said Harting. “We’re just all very motivated to provided assistance any way that we can.”
17 days later, Harting is back and said he is just grateful to help people still recovering.
“Everybody on our team is motivated and wants to get picked for that mission to be able to go down there and provide the assistance,” said Harting. “That’s what keeps us in this, long hours a lot of years, lots of training, but to go down there is very rewarding.”
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