When a disaster overwhelms local responders, the country sends in trained urban search and rescue task forces. Each one runs on a 16,400-item equipment cache. This page explains who these teams are, the difference between the federal and state systems, and what they have done in the field.
An urban search and rescue (US&R) task force is a multi-disciplinary team built to locate, reach, and stabilize people trapped by structural collapse, flooding, earthquakes, and other disasters. A full Type 1 team is about 70 people: search specialists, rescue technicians, structural engineers, physicians, hazmat specialists, canine handlers, logistics, and planning.
The team is only half the capability. The other half is the cache: a standardized, FEMA-defined set of roughly 16,400 pieces of equipment, weighing about 60,000 pounds, palletized and ready to move by truck or in the hold of a C-17. The cache is built so the team can operate independently for the first 72 hours, before any resupply reaches the disaster.
Most people only know about the federal teams. There are two tiers, and the difference is the entire reason equipment funding is a problem worth solving.
The national network of 28 federal task forces, established in 1989 after the Loma Prieta earthquake. They can be deployed anywhere in the country by FEMA, and they receive annual federal readiness funding (roughly $1.1M per team in the GAO-era figure) to maintain training and equipment.
Below the federal tier sit hundreds of state and regional teams, organized through the State Urban Search & Rescue Alliance and individual state programs. They meet the same standards, deploy through mutual aid, and are often first to a disaster, but they do not receive the federal readiness money. They self-fund their equipment.
South Carolina runs six urban search and rescue teams: SC-TF1 plus five regional teams in Charleston, Greenville, Hilton Head, Myrtle Beach, and Columbia. For years the state had to hope and advocate for money to equip them. Recurring funding was only secured in 2024. That gap, real demand without an equipment budget, exists in dozens of states. It is the problem Project Cache and the Safe Global Readiness Platform are built to solve.
The demand is not theoretical. It is documented, annual, and growing. Each of these is a real deployment, with verified facts, and each one ran on the equipment cache.
Back-to-back with Milton, 13 days apart. State and federal teams on the ground within hours of landfall, working a region with no resident federal task force.
Read the record → Deployment 02A 12-story condominium collapsed in the night. Multiple task forces worked a 1.4-acre pile around the clock for 13 days. All 98 victims were recovered.
Read the record → Deployment 03Record rainfall, catastrophic flooding. For the first time, all 28 federal task forces were activated at once, alongside state and local teams.
Read the record → Deployment 04The largest US&R deployment to that point. All 28 task forces deployed; teams made more than 6,500 rescues across a drowned city.
Read the record → Deployment 05Days after Harvey, Irma forced one of the largest evacuations in U.S. history. Task forces saved or assisted thousands across two theaters.
Read the record → Deployment 06A major storm on the Gulf Coast drew teams from across the country. New York's task force alone sent 83 members, six dogs, and four boats.
Read the record → Deployment 07The young federal system's first major test. Task forces from across the country worked the rubble of a bombed federal building.
Read the record → Deployment 08A violent early-morning quake tested California's task forces and the national system in its formative years.
Read the record →Sources: FEMA National US&R Response System; DHS press archives; FEMA 2017 Hurricane Season After-Action Report; GAO-16-87; state emergency management offices; published incident after-action reporting. Figures reflect the events as reported.
Project Cache turns the system above into something you can explore, line item by line item, and put in the field.