Hurricane Milton is far from Miami, but local firefighters are heading toward the storm

When a condominium tower collapsed in Surfside three years ago, Lexie the county rescue dog was there to try and sniff out survivors. The 6-year-old yellow lab also headed out to the Panhandle when Hurricane Idalia ravaged northern Florida last year.

On Wednesday, Lexie was in the very front of the send-off ceremony for her search-and-rescue team with Miami-Dade County, joining dozens of firefighters, paramedics and specialists for deployment to help somewhere in the path of Hurricane Milton , still to be determined.

“Lexie is always training,” said her handler and owner, Oliver Samy, a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue lieutenant and a member of the county’s urban search-and-rescue team.

READ MORE: Fears of flooding by Hurricane Milton spark run on sandbags in Miami-Dade County

With most of Florida’s large metropolitan areas under siege by Milton, Florida is leaning heavily on Lexie and other rescue specialists from the Miami area for storm response. Ray Jadallah, the county’s fire chief , said the 115-member Miami-Dade team is unusually large because the other search-and-rescue squads in Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville can’t spare firefighters while their communities brace for direct hits from Milton.

“You’ve got to worry about your own county first,” Jadallah said.

He said with other teams in the southeastern United States already deployed in North Carolina and Georgia to help victims of Hurricane Helene’s destruction in late September, the federal government is calling in rescue squads from California and Washington state to help with the Milton response.

Storm deployments are frequent for firefighters in the Miami area, home to two of the leading search-and-rescue teams in Florida. The Miami-Dade team and its counterpart in the city of Miami — known respectively as Florida One and Florida Two — regularly get called up as part of the state and federal disaster responses.

“There’s a reason they’re ‘One’ and ‘Two,’” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Democratic member of Congress from Broward County who was once emergency director under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “They’re the best in the business.”

Either Tallahassee or Washington covers the deployment costs, and the local teams give disaster managers the flexibility of having crews of specialists from around the country able to deploy when disaster strikes.

A city of Miami spokesperson said its search-and-rescue team is ready to send another 100 specialists where Florida needs the help after Milton. That team includes personnel from other departments in the area, including in Broward County, said Miami Fire-Rescue spokesman Pete Sanchez.

Another two dozen officers are scheduled to deploy from the Miami Police Department, too, according to agency spokesman Michael Vega.

The group of rescue specialists, HAZMAT technicians, building engineers and at least one doctor will likely leave in the “middle of the night,” Sanchez said — the start of what’s expected to be a two-week deployment for the team members, many of whom traveled to the same region two years ago for Hurricane Ian, subsisting on ready-to-eat meals known as MREs and sleeping on the sand.

“Those first 48 hours, they’re working diligently,” Sanchez said. “They’re not even stopping.”

Five first responders in Hialeah will be part of the Florida Two deployment, according to Mayor Esteban Bovo’s office. Joining them is Blaze, the golden retriever that assisted in Fort Myers following Hurricane Ian, as well as on the site of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside.

Miami Beach and Coral Gables both plan to send teams from their respective police and fire departments after the storm, according to city spokeswomen.

Though county administrators said they hadn’t yet gotten word on when or where the squad would be heading, the Miami-Dade team expects its members to work 12-hour shifts once they arrive. Along with engineers, doctors and canine teams, Miami-Dade is sending boats for water rescues.

Samy, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue lieutenant and dog handler, said he wasn’t sure what sleeping arrangements awaited him and Lexie once they rolled out of Miami-Dade County.

Another county canine specialist, Lt. Lisa Bullard, said she had a 72-hour bag packed for her and her search-and-rescue dog, Phish. The black lab is 5 and, like Lexie, trained to sniff out human scents buried under feet of debris. The dogs work for rewards – in Phish’s case, the chance to play. “She’s very toy-oriented,” Bullard said.

From their front row seats on the bleachers, Bullard, Samy, Lexie and Phish had upfront views as multiple higher-ups addressed the team, including Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Oliver Gilbert, chair of the County Commission.

In his remarks, Jadallah emphasized that with Milton’s strength and its track through an area so recently struck by Helene, team members should expect to encounter particularly devastated Floridians.

“Anything we can do to make things a little bit easier for them — take the extra step,” he said. “Whatever is required.”

Miami Herald reporter Aaron Leibowitz and el Nuevo Herald reporter Verónica Egui Brito contributed to this story.