They are 1 of currently 28 national teams that are rotated for coverage. Usually 2 teams are assigned as the go-to teams for domestic response nationally at any given time, and they rotate that responsibility (maybe every month or so?). It’s been a while since I worked with a team- I’m pretty sure there were 32 teams back then. VA-TF1 is pretty unique in that they are an “INTL” designated team, so they’ll likely go before Indiana or Florida teams internationally. TX-TF1 and the multiple FL teams likely see more responses domestically, given US weather events, so I’d wonder if they’d have a lesser change to respond to an international event. I know that CA and VA TFs both responded to Mexico’s 2017 earthquake. Hope that helps. I’d also guess that VA-TF1 (or possibly neither) wasn’t the currently scheduled team to respond. Then, if there happened to be a domestic response needed, right now, there are still the two existing, scheduled teams on standby, ready to respond domestically today. Here’s more general info: https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-prepared... https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-prepared... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_Urban_Search_and_Res... Interestingly, there are no Federal USAR teams funded in PR. With the big hurricane a few years ago, transpo to PR was very limited and we were working to get small drone operators over there for SAR and damage assessment. I think it was an effort just to get runways cleared to land aircraft. I remember wondering why they didn’t have an organic, federal USAR team there, too. It’s likely, though, that they couldn’t achieve or maintain the requirements of having a fully staffed team of volunteers available there to meet all of the organic training requirements. ** Edited by reconhokie at 2/12/2023, 3:02:58 PM