BUTLERVILLE, Ind. - The Fire and Rescue unit, from Fort Knox, Ky., could see two victims trapped in their vehicles under the collapsed floor of a parking garage, and they would need to use a jack hammer to breach through concrete to reach them.
The problem was that none of the team had ever used a jack hammer before.
Since this was an exercise though, everybody was able to step back and learn a skill that could save a life someday. This scenario, played out at the tail end of the U.S. Army North Vibrant Response 11.1 homeland emergency response exercise at Muscatatuck Urban Training Complex, was designed to test skills and allow a venue for strengthening them.
“We haven’t had very extensive training, nothing with breaching, like we did in there so that was all new to us,” said Fort Knox Firefighter Ryan Pratt. “I, personally, haven’t worked with a jack hammer and that was cool.”
Upon arriving at Muscatatuck’s collapsed parking garage venue, the Fort Knox firemen were told that the structure had collapsed and several people were possibly trapped inside. Their job was to get those people out as quickly and safely as possible.
After performing an external site survey to determine the safety of the building, the firemen were shown which section needed to be shored up. They immediately got to work cutting four-by-fours and boards to create a stable workspace.
When questions arose about how things needed to be done, subject matter experts from Safety Systems, Incorporated, were always close by to lend a helping hand and ensure everything was done properly and safely.
Even though there were several tasks that the Fort Knox firemen had never performed before, the SSI instructors were impressed with the small unit.
“My honest assessment is that they did extremely well,” proclaimed SSI Instructor Robert Hoecherl. “Shoring was new to them. Breaching and breaking, they had never done before. They worked well as a team and their mitigations were very good.”
A hole was jack hammered through the concrete large enough to fit a remote-control camera. The camera gave fireman Shane Crutcher a view of the vehicles and trapped people inside - people being played by mannequins.
The call was immediately made to jack hammer a hole large enough to crawl through.
Each fireman took turns using the jack hammer in order to get familiar with the tool until they had to cut through rebar and crawl through the hole to get to the mock victims.
In a very tight, confined space, the firemen had to perform emergency first aid on the victims before pulling them from the vehicles, placing them on backboards, and transporting them back through the hole and to medical personnel.
The exercise tested the skills that the firemen already possessed and taught them new skills they never knew were available to them. The realistic training proved to be invaluable for the firemen.
“This provides us with a way to train that we normally can’t do where we’re at,” Pratt continued.
“We can’t get cars flipped upside down, crushed the way they are here. It makes you think outside the box as far as what to do in certain situations instead of waiting for the real life thing to happen and then have to figure it out there. It was really good training for us.”