Photo By Master Sgt. Monica Dalberg | U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant William Henderson, a firefighter in the New York Air...... read more read more
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Guard members team with local rescuers for hurricane exercise
Members of the 106th Rescue Wing trained with the Suffolk County Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Task Force at Montauk County Park on the east end of Long Island in a 2-day exercise simulating a hurricane October 14 and 15.
The training exercise required participants to search for and rescue victims of a hurricane that hit the eastern twin forks of the island, with lives in various perilous scenarios.
“A good thing with this exercise was the size of the area we were working in,” stated Senior Master Sgt. James Nizza, 106th Rescue Wing Fire Department Fire Chief and exercise task force leader. “In reality we could put everything in one location and accomplish the same tasks, but the fact that it’s spread out so much is what we’re going to see in an actual event.”
The south shore of Long Island is vulnerable to hurricane storm surges because a landfall would first occur there and water would move inland due to the low elevation. When Superstorm Sandy slammed the island in 2012, utilities were taken out, roads were washed away and thousands were left homeless.
“We train all the time in various aspects of rescue…It’s been escalated since Sandy,” said Nizza.
The combined training with local Suffolk County task forces encompassed pre-deployment; movement of equipment; debris clearance necessary to reach and accomplish rescues in water, structures, confined spaces; and communications. Scenarios included victims trapped in collapsed buildings; canines searching the areas for trapped people; victims stranded on bluffed beaches with an incoming tide; and the transportation of victims.
According to Nizza, the media commonly depicts victims being pulled from rubble, but shoring and breaching can be key elements of such rescues, as the tasks are often required to safely reach trapped victims. Shoring is the construction of temporary supports to aid in stabilizing collapsed structures, while breaching is essentially making a hole through an obstacle. Exercise members trained in shoring and breaching in mock-ups of collapsed structures, complete with toppled furniture and a mannequin under heavy metal debris.
Communication is another vital element in operations and in command and control of equipment and personnel allocation. According to Chief Master Sgt. John Bellissimo, chief of 106 RQW Communications, setting up “on the road” by trees, valleys, hills, cloud coverage, and even noise interference from high voltage powerlines can be complicated. Maintaining connectivity requires constant monitoring.
“The timely coordination of the search and rescue of a victim – the response time - can be the difference between life and death for someone,” said Bellissimo “We provide the backbone for communication to happen.”
Rainy conditions during the training added a real-world element to the training. “Although we can plan for an exercise, we can’t plan for the weather to fit the scenario as well as it did this weekend,” added Bellissimo.
Training together is beneficial for both Guard and Suffolk County task force members, Nizza stated. “If this were an actual event, these are the people we’re working with. They’re getting to know what we can do, and we’re getting to know their capabilities. When an actual event occurs, we’re not meeting for the first time on an incident and it’s a smoother process to get things moving. This is part of an ongoing relationship with local responders; we are not simply integrating into their operations, we have become part of their team.”
| Date Taken: | 10.23.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 10.23.2017 10:43 |
| Story ID: | 252654 |
| Location: | WESTHAMPTON BEACH, NY, US |
| Web Views: | 47 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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