FEMA Task Force In Colorado Trains For Building Rescues Like The One Taking Place In Florida
(CBS4) - At the headquarters of FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force in Colorado, they train for the very type of situation now taking place in the Miami area. Urban Search and Rescue Colorado Task Force 1 has built their own demolished structure.
A video posted on YouTube by West Metro Fire Rescue shows how extensive the CO-TF1 training gets.
"We have a collapse scenario and are trying to breach our way in," a rescuer explains.
They have to shore up spaces to be able get inside the smallest of passages to reach victims.
"We have to start shoring from the outside and work our way in," says one of the rescuers on the video.
CO-TF1 veteran Steve Aseltine, who was among those at the World Trade Center after 9/11, explained the process in an interview with CBS4.
"We slide in pieces of concrete so that we can breach through there and simulate that and reach into the voice spaces where the victims have a possibility of being."
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In Surfside in the Miami area, the structure was suddenly transfomred from an elegant condo building into a pile of earthquake-like rubble with victims
inside.
It's the type of scenario they practice for in Colorado.
"This is a simulated parking garage collapse we have built here," Aseltine said.
The training includes simluated victims.
In Florida they have been working from the bottom up so as not to upset the balance of the collapsed building during these critical hours. It is a race against time. How long they have in Miami to find people still alive is uncertain.
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