MESC Burning Issues 149421.indd - Office of the Fire Commissioner

BURNING ISSUESNEWS AND VIEWS OF MANIT3rd Annual Provincial UrbanSearch & Rescue ExerciseThe former Rivers Air Force Basewas the location of the 3rd AnnualProvincial Urban Search andRescue exercise. The training exercisetook place on December 1, 2 and 3 andwas attended by 50+ Team Membersfrom the following organizations:Regional Health AuthoritiesMutual Aid District Fire DepartmentsRCMPWinnipeg PoliceManitoba HydroSaskatoon FireOffice of the Fire Commissioner Staff,from Brandon and WinnipegThe scenario centered around atornado strike and as a result, manylocal workers were trapped in variousbuildings in and around the base site.In this exercise, the objectives were:1. Deployment – The Team deployedfrom the Manitoba EmergencyServices College to the Riversbase. There was no pre-stagingof any equipment or personnel.The Incident Command Teamsent out an advance party todetermine where to place the base ofoperations.2. Search and Rescue Operations –Initially, the recon Team did a quicksearch to look for surface victimsand to sizeup the area.Diagramsand photosgave theIncidentCommandTeam muchneededinformationto developa plan.From this original information theIncident Command Team formulatedthe Incident Action Plans to becarried out by the search and rescuesquads. In the field, the search teamsused a combination of K-9, electronicequipment and visual searching tolocate the more than thirty victimsthat were placed in various locationsaround the base. The Rescue Teamsencountered a variety of situationsthat required them to use suchtechniques as shoring, heavy lifting,breaching of concrete, cutting metaland manovering themselves andequipment through many smallopenings and areas. The other factorthat everyone had to deal with wasthe cold. The mercury dipped downto -42c on Saturday night. This is notthe first time we have encounteredcold conditions. The exercises inWinnipeg and Calgary were both intemperatures well below normal. Itis the dedication of the Team in theseconditions that has earned us thetitle of Canada’s Cold Weather USARTeam.3. The final objective of the exercise wasto redeploy back to the ManitobaEmergency Services College. TheIncident Command again puttogether a demobilization planthat gave everyone a job to do andeveryone and all equipment wasback to the College in the earlyafternoon.There were many lessons learnedduring this exercise in relation to theTeam and equipment. There was alsoa need to re-emphasis the importanceof the logistics section to an incident(training or actual incident). Thankyougoes out to Karen Bretcherwho kept us well fed throughoutthe weekend; the students from thesenior and junior class (Public FireParamedic Program) that volunteeredto be convincing victims; the ownersof the Air Base Site for allowing usthe opportunity to train in a realisticsetting; Shawna Kerwin from the PublicSafety and Emergency PrepardenessCanada that attended as an observerand gave a great critique of theexercise; Dan Paulsen and Ray Unraufrom the City of Saskatoon for theirparticipation and willingness to jumpinto search and rescue squads whenwe were short staffed; Tobin Praznik,Sean Fisher and Rob Pike who were theother organizing and directing staff thatput in countless hours; and last but notleast, the Team Members themselveswith whose willingness to participateand volunteer their time makes CANTF-4 such a success and a leader in theCanadian USAR community.Contributed by Scott Kerbis – OFC GSARCoordinatorMore photos of Team exercisesand responses can be found underthe Urban Search & Rescue andGround Search & Rescue section’sphoto galleries on our website(www.firecomm.gov.mc.ca).8