Dozens of emergency personnel descend on a strip mall that collapsed, trapping customers and employees inside. From the ruined structure, cries for help and screams of pain resonate -- from where exactly, the ear cannot pinpoint.
The top floor of the two-story concrete building crashed to the lower floor, "pancaked" a fireman said, crushing everything below.
In a flurry of activity and noise, rescuers -- burly men wielding chainsaws, cutting torches and colossal demolition hammers -- set up a command center 100 yards from the building, which threatens to collapse even further.
The uninjured and those who can move on their own have been safely removed, while the remaining victims cannot exit the decimated building, possibly because of blocked escape routes or broken legs. They now count on the skill of the urban search and rescue (USAR) team that has arrived.
These are not first responders -- the USAR personnel do the really dangerous work.
A USAR team includes highly trained and specialized structural technicians who are deployed into extremely dangerous emergency response situations to extract trapped and injured victims.
The rescue process is deliberate and methodical. Each victim is extricated carefully, with safety constantly in mind.
A wall is safely shored up with wooden braces -- preventing further collapse -- while rescuers breach a hole in the concrete and pull out a critically injured victim.
The calamity may appear real -- but it's not. It's taking place at a uniquely realistic training facility known as Disaster City.
Top-Notch Training
At Disaster City -- located in College Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M University -- 52 acres are dedicated to a training facility that includes enormous mounds of rubble, overturned trains, and structures that can be collapsed repeatedly in endless configurations.
Disaster City grew out of the Oklahoma City bombing, said Bob McKee, director of emergency response and rescue for Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) and the state's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) USAR team, Texas Task Force 1.
That dreadful event highlighted the need for a state-of-the-art USAR training facility. "Disaster City was a vision of Dr. G. Kemble Bennett," McKee said.
Bennett was director of TEEX, and is the current Texas A&M University vice chancellor and dean of engineering.
"As a result of the Oklahoma City bombing, Dr. Bennett felt there needed to be a world-class facility to train responders in near-lifelike conditions," he said. "What we have today is basically a location that meets the middle ground of true emergency response training along with the technology of simulation training, and several other new and emerging technologies."
Built in 1998 for $7.7 million, Disaster City draws emergency responders from around the world -- including a USAR team from the United Kingdom in early 2005 that later applied its training after the London subway bombings of July 7, 2005.
Student View
Billy Parker, program manager for TEEX, claimed that, "Nobody has a training facility to this degree," and that students at Disaster City can "accomplish something in six hours that would take months on the job."
And students agree.
Tom Coval, a captain for the Vancouver, Wash., Fire Department, said Washington recently formed its own urban search and rescue (USAR) team and will send groups of students to learn and train at Disaster City.
"We've had about 100 of us come through here," Coval said. "We have six people here from our technical rescue team. The amount of hours we get here is equal to two years of [on-the-job] training."
The benefit, Coval and others echoed, is the critical real-life events on which they can train that rarely happen on the job.
"We get 10 concrete breaches here in a week, where on the job, we might get one in a year," Coval explained.
Like most students, Coval said Disaster City is perhaps the best possible use for training time and training dollars. "This class is a better way to spend money," he said. "It is amazing. You can't comprehend it until you see it. You can't beat the simulation. You can't find these kinds of props anywhere else."
Greg Rogers, a firefighter/paramedic from south Florida, was equally pleased with Disaster City's offerings.
"I've taken 150 hours of USAR courses, and Disaster City is by far superior," he said. "The equipment and support are unbelievable. The instructors are incredible because they've been there, they've done it."
Day of Disaster
Time: 0700
A day at Disaster City begins as students bearing an array of departmental insignias descend on training structures located throughout the facility.
Five collapsable buildings -- including a strip mall, office complex and a single-family home -- allow realistic simulation of a wide range of emergency scenarios. Three rubble piles, including a stack of wooden debris that looks eerily similar to many Gulf Coast structures after Katrina hit, train rescuers to safely remove victims from a destroyed structure, and train search-and-rescue dogs to locate victims.
"We use [props] in those real-world environments, allow all those tools to come together with the equipment, and then bring those rescuers to bear to make a difference in finding live victims," said McKee. "Each [scenario] is tailored to what the jurisdiction would have. We've got a freight train; we've got a passenger train. What they may be challenged with is the simple mass casualty response. A mass casualty is defined as two or more patients. So a community may want to test their responders ... [if] we pack that train with 100 victims, for instance, how would they deal with that?"
Time: 0845
Students use wood and metal shores to stabilize a collapsed structure.
Rescuers are trained to shore the walls of a collapsed building and breach a hole without risking further structure collapse. Once a hole is breached and rescuers enter the structure, additional shoring is typically needed to support the unstable roof.
Time: 0900
Incident commanders in the facility's Emergency Operations Training Center observe the action throughout Disaster City.
Cameras are attached to light and telephone poles throughout Disaster City. "We have 13 cameras," said Jason Cook, communications director for the TEEX. "Each is connected to our Emergency Operations Training Center, allowing incident commanders to watch the students work in real time."
As the action unfolds, incident commanders train on virtual situations, logistics and operations. "When a training scenario is under way, it gets really tense in here," Cook said.
Time: 1100
Firefighters from Vancouver, Wash., southern Florida, South Carolina and east Dallas begin their final training procedure of an eight-day course. Their mission: Breach a wall in a collapsed building to free a trapped man.
To up the ante, they imagine the victim is a 400-pound man with a fractured left leg.
Unlike the fast-paced action portrayed in Hollywood movies, urban search and rescue often proceeds slowly and cautiously. "Urban search and rescue is a very methodical process," said Cook, pointing to the shoring and braces supporting the collapsable roof. "You want to make sure your rescuers are safe."
Time: 1105 -- 1200
Firefighters begin breaching a hole through a wall of the collapsed structure.
Each of Disaster City's collapsable buildings is outfitted with concrete inserts, in which students breach holes. Once destroyed, Disaster City simply pours a new concrete insert.
Time: 1215
Rescuers create a hole large enough to accommodate the rescue of a victim.
After being securely strapped onto a portable makeshift gurney, the victim is slowly moved through the hole onto the ground and transported by four firefighters to the command center.
Time: 1300
At one of Disaster City's concrete rubble piles, three students begin searching for a victim trapped deep within the debris.
"In the rubble piles, there are piles within piles," McKee said. "We have safe areas -- we have created void spaces -- that we can put victims in, but the area surrounding that is a true live rubble pile."
Time: 1310
When they spot the victim, students rig an elaborate pulley system to get him out of the hole. Before bringing the man out, disaster medical specialist Jake Emerson from South Carolina tends to the victim's wounds. He is snugly secured in the harness as students slowly fish him out of the hole.
Time: 1440
Students form two lines up the rubble pile to safely lower the victim to the ground. The entire operation takes nearly two hours.
Time: 1445
A student team works to breach two concrete panels, one of which was part of a collapsed building's second floor, to free someone trapped inside
.
Inside Disaster City's collapsable buildings, roof breakdowns can be configured in countless different ways, thanks to heavy-duty hinges and a wall full of high-strength support rods. The rods can be positioned as desired, creating a slanted roof collapse at any angle or a flat, pancake-type collapse.
"The walls can move in and out, the door frames are on an angle," said Brian Smith, USAR training coordinator for TEEX. "The roof lines can be collapsed in a series of different types: a flat collapse, a v-collapse. That poses challenges to the rescuers so that -- prior to going in to search for or rescue victims -- they have to ensure their safety. They put up shoring -- wood or pneumatic shoring -- and actually work their way in using some of the technology we have; search cameras that are photo-optic devices that have a camera, as well as two-way communications that we can actually penetrate into a space."
Time: 1500
The student team uses a construction-reciprocating saw -- generally referred to as a Sawzall -- to create the floor hole.
Students at Disaster City train on numerous tools to become better suited for different rescue scenarios they may encounter. They also practice various rescue approaches, the two most common being a standard wall breach and a dirty breach, which is a quick rescue at the expense of some safety.
Time: 1505
After entering the structure through the first opening, the students, who are in an extremely cramped space, cut through a concrete insert directly above them. With approximately 3 feet of vertical room in which to work, they drill, cut, and most importantly, shore the collapsed floor.
Above them, the trapped person calls out his location, helping rescuers cut safely into the ceiling.
Time: 1525
The hole is cut to sufficient size so the trapped person can crawl to the initial breach.
Carefully avoiding the jagged rebar protruding from the concrete, the soon-to-be rescued victim slides into the dank and dusty void below. After crawling through some debris on his way to the exit, students help him escape the structure.
