Kentucky Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) is planning to be fully operational by July 2026. The program has already responded to multiple disasters in the state and now aims to be more efficient when it comes to helping those affected by emergency situations.
Kentucky USAR has two task forces in the state. Officials said these teams of highly trained personnel are self-sufficient for up to 72 hours during response efforts. Eric Gibson, director of Kentucky Emergency Management, said USAR has already had a large impact on the state.
“We organize the deployment of our local search and rescue teams. And we have already touched over 1,500 citizens in our state with this process. And I think that says a lot about what we’re able to do, but 1,500 lives have been impacted by this program already; saved, evacuated, airlifted, rescued, all kinds of different categories that we capture. But that’s touching a lot of people to not be fully operational,” said Gibson.
Doug Hargress, USAR Coordinator for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, said the program will be able to respond to disasters more efficiently once fully operational.
“When we know that that storm’s coming, we’re going to space our teams across the state. Right so we’re going to reduce our (response) time down to an hour or so because those guys will be in the trucks waiting for the big storms that are coming through. For a disaster like Martin County, we could have teams rostered and in route within two hours plus drive time,” said Hargress.
Kentucky USAR has several future goals including the construction of a 4.5-acre training site, statewide education and outreach, the full operation of both USAR task forces by July 2026, the operation of an incident support team by April 2026, as well as presenting response strategies to government leaders and first responders. People can volunteer to help with disaster recovery through the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management’s website.