July 30, 2025 | 8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
Nick DiCicco, CPE, Director, Chagrin Valley Dispatch & OH-TERT State Coordinator, Chagrin Valley Dispatch, Bedford, Ohio; Natalie Duran, CPE, Team Lead for Peer Support, Miami Dade Fire Rescue; State Coordinator – FL TERT, Florida TERT, Miami: Jason Smith, ENP, Texas TERT State Coordinator and 9-1-1 Operations Manager at North Central Texas Emergency Communications District., Arlington, Texas
When Ohio Telecommunicator Emergency Response Taskforce (TERT) arrived at the Bumcombe County, North Carolina, emergency communications center they found public safety telecommunicators sleeping under their desks.
Nick DiCicco, who led the Ohio team, said they had to be convinced to go home. The Ohioans slept in tents as they relieved exhausted telecommunicators whose jurisdiction suffered the brunt of Hurricane Helene in September 2024. The storm was the deadliest to strike the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005.
DiCicco said one of the telecommunicators lost 11 members of her extended family — cousins, aunts and uncles who lived in the mountains around Asheville — but she still came to work.
On the last day of APCO 2025 in Baltimore, DiCiccio joined Natalie Duran and Jason Smith to discuss TERT deployments in general and Helene in particular. Diccio said four members of his team stayed the entire month-long deployment while the rest returned home after two weeks.
The Ohioans brought a million-dollar mobile command center to the scene and a tower was set up, restoring some communications to the devastated area. After a few days, the team moved to a FEMA camp in tractor-trailers with bunks for the telecommunicators. The federal government reimbursed his agency for personnel and equipment costs associated with the deployment, totaling $651,000, Diccio said.
Written by Richard Goldstein
