John Diamandes; Task Force Leader, VA-TF One. Virginia Task Force one, seventy seven member team as a FEMA asset has been deployed. We remain ready; we’re ready to go in an hour’s notice. At this time in the down time we’re tracking the storm but we’re also preparing by training on the various aspects that we may encounter on this deployment one being swift water response, we have to be ready for swift water we have to be ready for flooding.  We have to be ready to search any area that’s devastated by wind water damage so we also have to remain ready in three or four different venues when we go ahead and prepare for this deployment.  While we’re in the standby mode we try to utilize every bit of time that we have, we have all these different groups together; search, we have the canine group we have rescue we have the doctors with us so we utilize this time while were waiting to be deployed on this mission to go ahead and actually train, we have hands on training when we can and we go over the basics.
Sonja Heritage; Canine Specialists, VA-TF One.  While were awaiting deployment as a team and an assignment we are keeping very busy getting up early in the morning we are doing briefings and we are breaking out into our separate components as a team and doing specialized training, so we’re keeping busy and just waiting for a call. It’s a long a operation it begins with screening and looking for the right dog and wants to work will do anything in the world for that toy and engagement with that toy with anybody anyplace.  Once you have that dog then we incorporate into a search scenario take them all over the country into different scenarios both collapsed structures anything and everything we can do to show them that no matter where we go that no matter where we go and we give them the search command that there is somebody in the rubble and if they go find and bark they will get their toy and get and get that game for the victim, so they’re working for themselves which is a beautiful thing. We have ongoing training with these dogs there’s a lot of FEMA sponsored trainings that we have to incorporate and are very good towards our preparedness. We certify theses dogs every three years through the FEMA process and work together with all the other teams nationally to maintain our readiness so when we get the call these dogs are ready.