Heroes learning from heroes: Local fire departments develop military search-and-rescue team

Photo By Staff Sgt. Kelsey Blankenship | Soldiers from the 887th Engineer Battalion, out of Augusta, Ga., gather wood to practice working with handheld power tools on a 10,000 square-foot rubble pile training site, Aug. 31, in Raleigh, N.C. The soldiers are part of a search and rescue unit and were working side by side with civilian firefighters from Raleigh, Fayetteville and Cary, N.C., as a part of a Vigilant Guard training exercise. The National Guard and civilian first responders worked together to help each other, learning from the others' techniques. The site the soldiers worked on allowed them to work on most aspects of search and rescue.  

NC, UNITED STATES

08.31.2012

Story by Sgt. Kelsey Blankenship 

382nd Public Affairs Detachment

RALEIGH, N.C. – Soldiers from the Georgia National Guard’s 877th Engineer Battalion gathered at Raleigh’s 10,000 square foot urban search-and-rescue rubble pile as a part of the crisis-response training they received, Aug. 31, during North Carolina’s Vigilant Guard exercise.

“This is a great facility for us and for anyone that can train here. We cover everything here but trench rescue,” said Frank McLaurin, an urban search-and-rescue facilitator. “We can do high-angle; we can do confined space, breeching, breaking, cutting, burning and shoring. We have spent a lot of time developing props in each of the disciplines associated with [search and rescue] to be very challenging for our team. It promotes teamwork and basically it takes a full team to operate this whole course.”

The main mission of the soldiers in the 877th Engineer Battalion is search and extraction. The soldiers train during drill periods to be able to react if called upon during an emergency. The training available to them during Vigilant Guard in North Carolina helps them to expand and rehearse the skills already learned, while building their trust and friendships throughout their teams.

“Obviously there is a lot of camaraderie that happens since we’re in teams. At drill [weekends] you’re working together, but once you get out here with the scenarios you really have to come together to work and you see how much you need each other,” said Spc. Charles Reynolds, a soldier with the battalion. “I think the team-building aspect of it is really going to be beneficial as we go back and do our drills and prepare in case a scenario happens.”

National Guard units from multiple states worked together with civilian first-responders across North Carolina during the Vigilant Guard training exercise to ensure their ability to coordinate and respond in the event of an incident such as a hurricane or local terrorist threat.

“Both agencies have different kinds of materials, equipment, training and personnel. They have skills that we don’t have and we have skills they don’t have,” said Master Sgt. Ivan Champion, out of North Carolina’s Joint Force Headquarters. “If we work as a team, what they lack we can make up for it, and vice versa.”

Vigilant Guard works soldiers in all aspects of the National Guard, not just those who would be in combat or search-and-rescue roles.

“Vigilant Guard is a big exercise. It plays not only the people that are in the field; it plays our state headquarters’ ability to be able to track, to be able to move units, to be able to report and respond,” Champion said. “It’s not just an exercise that is at a certain location. It exercises all the main portions of the North Carolina Guard in itself.”

Vigilant Guard is a very special and fast-paced weeklong operation that keeps service members on their feet for an experience they won’t soon forget, and training that will almost certainly be necessary in the future.

“Being able to come out here to Vigilant Guard and put together what we’ve done in drill; to really put it together and experience a potential scenario. Vigilant Guard’s been really helpful for us,” Reynolds said.

• Date Taken: 08.31.2012
• Date Posted: 09.03.2012 17:59
• Story ID: 94169
• Location: NC, US