On Saturday 27 August 2011 members of the US Department of the Interior’s National Park Service regional incident command team set out for a pre-deployment mobilisation in response to Hurricane Irene, which they anticipated would make landfall on Sunday 28 August. The specialised park service unit was deployed to Cape Hatteras, NC, as part of ‘Operation Hurricane Irene’.
As part of their mission, the National Park Service arrived with a DRASH TMSS medium and helped the overwhelmed state and local authorities set-up a command and control centre. A DRASH TMSS medium can be set up within minutes by minimal personnel and has been used by the US Military and Nato for a variety of missions, including humanitarian relief efforts, and more recently has gained the attention of more federal and state agencies.
"When we arrived in Cape Hatteras the area was devastated and much of the infrastructure was in disarray," said Patrick Miller, a US park ranger with the National Park Service. "We found the TMSS medium to be extremely beneficial because the system provided an environmentally controlled facility with lighting and power that could be quickly and easily turned into a command post."
Part of the US Army’s standard integrated command post system (SICPS), DRASH TMSS medium and large systems offer 442 and 1,250 square feet of usable space each as standalone units, and integrate shelter, mobility, environmental control and power in one complete package.
As the mission changed from one of rescue and recovery, personnel from the National Park Service, as well as other federal agencies, quickly redeployed the DRASH TMSS medium as a forward operating base to support damage assessment teams and to help the park service implement their continuity of operations plan for restoration of the park.