Massachusetts teams joins hurricane relief efforts in North Carolina, Florida

Massachusetts emergency relief teams are joining in on the national aid efforts in the aftermath of hurricanes Helene and Milton.

“It’s been a crazy, crazy and rough ride,” said Robert Brown, CEO of Broco Energy, speaking from where he and teams were providing relief in Florida. “But when you see what you’re supporting — usually the guys that do this have a call to help, or first responder mentality, so they don’t mind working the long hours, because we know we’re providing some essential aids to get these communities back up and running.”

Brown said teams from Broco, a Haverhill-based, veteran-owned heating oil and emergency service company, went down ahead of Helene on Sept. 23 and are likely to stay another month.

The company first brought several trucks down to Tallahassee, where Helene was first predicted to hit, and moved through North Carolina and then the Gulf Coast of Florida with over 50 trucks as the storms pillaged the southern states.

They were far from the only Massachusetts volunteers to rush to aid after the natural disasters.

From Massachusetts and New England fuel companies, Brown said, they’ve worked collaboratively on relief efforts with from Townsend Energy, Tasha Fuels and Lake Region Energy, among others from across the country.

Over 50 Massachusetts Red Cross volunteers made their way down to southern states in the wake of the hurricanes. The organization also put out calls for volunteers, blood and donations and noted $250,000 donations from DraftKings and the GE Vernova Foundation.

“We have bottled water, snacks on hand, containers for hot meals when the time comes,” said one Red Cross volunteer Kelly Isenor in a video posted by the organization from Tallahassee before Milton. “We’ll shelter in place for the duration of the storm, then as soon as its safe to get out there, we are ready to go and meet the needs for anything that comes in from hurricane Milton.”

Massachusetts Task Force 1, one of the 28 FEMA Urban Search and Rescue teams with 16 members based out of Beverly, was first deployed to North Carolina in late September to assist land and water rescue operations after Helene. Over two weeks later, the team’s recovery operations are still ongoing in Madison County.

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency also announced it would send down three emergency management personnel to assist efforts in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia on Oct. 9. The staff are helping to support communications, logistics and other aid efforts in the region.

Brown, a former Navy Seabee steelworker and Chelsea Fire Department captain who’s responded to natural disasters since Hurricane Harvey in 2017, called the scene the “largest I’ve ever seen.”

“There’s a lot of organized chaos, there’s a lot of moving parts,” said Brown. “But things change so quickly, and we’re moving truck to different areas, nursing homes, and the critical facilities, supporting the relief efforts in the hospitals. This incident scaled up so fast.”

Ways to assist hurricane Milton and Helene relief efforts can be found on FEMA’s Volunteer and Donate page.