Operation Endeavor to Deploy to Texas to Help Harvey Victims

From the Red Cross to the National Guard, many Connecticut residents are heading down to help in Texas after Hurricane Harvey.

A local organization called Operation Endeavor has been on the go the last few days trying to buy all the supplies they’ll need to sustain themselves and help those in need for several days in the area hit hard by Harvey.

The five-man volunteer team will be leaving on Friday. Their specific mission will be to provide medical and emergency rescue services.

Their backgrounds include law enforcement, military and medical experience.

On Tuesday, they bought supplies needed to sustain themselves for four days and to help others in need, from life vests to waders. 

The team will fly into Austin on Friday afternoon and then make their way to Friendsville, just southeast of Houston. The team has contacts who are working within the incident command system to coordinate a response.

"We’re assuming we’re operating under our own conditions that there’s no power, that there’s no food that there’s no anything so we’re going down there prepared for the worst," Lawrence Smira, of Cornwall, said.

Smira, a former Navy medic, joins four other members of Operation Endeavor, including the founder and president, Stuart Hirsch, who is also the director of operations for the Department of Emergency at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury.

"They are very willing to go on the ground there and start helping and I’m very proud of those guys and I’m looking forward to the work that we can do to be of assistance," Hirsch, of Hudson Valley, New York, said. 

According to its website, Operation Endeavor is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to work globally to promote the development of rescue systems, EMS and support of emergency medicine in developing countries with little to no resources. The goal is to improve survivability in regions of great disparity.

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