A tornado blows through a community of only a few thousand in Southern Illinois. It destroys houses and other buildings, injuring and trapping residents, and causes a variety of damage and devastation to a community. Compare a small-scale disaster like this to one of massive destruction and national attention like Hurricane Katrina. When it comes to deploying federal resources, the latter obviously will be the greater priority. But where does that leave those people in Southern Illinois? That's where state urban search-and-rescue teams come in.

"It takes a while to activate a Federal Emergency Management Agency team, and FEMA wouldn't respond to every incident," says Michael DellaRocco, assistant chief of the Schenectady (N.Y.) Fire Department and a member of the development committee for New York's USAR program, which began in 1996. "Although it may be a disaster on the local level, it might not be on the national level. There has to be some kind of training for first responders in fire departments or nationwide, and different levels of response."

Events like the Oklahoma City bombing, the first World Trade Center attack, and Sept. 11, 2001, brought home the need to respond quickly an effectively to local disasters. Many states have organized urban search-and-rescue teams, some brand-new, others existing for years. New Jersey, for example, had USAR teams at Ground Zero in New York within hours of the terrorist attacks.

About five years ago, USAR teams from 12 states attended a FEMA-equivalent task force class, and attendees saw the benefits in sharing each other's knowledge, concerns and resources to promote and support state USAR teams nationwide. In August 2006, the State Urban Search & Rescue Alliance was created, representing 35 states, including Puerto Rico. SUSAR has working groups to develop standardized typing and credentialing agreements and training recommendations, as well as discipline-specific groups and administrative working groups. This non-profit organization helps managers work with their state emergency management representatives and with FEMA program leaders.

"The biggest thing [SUSAR is] trying to do is get every team credentialed to the same level [through FEMA and the National Incident Management System]," says Chuck Wehrli, a task force leader for the Illinois Task Force Team-1 and FEMA safety officer for Missouri TF-1. "For USAR teams, there are Types 1, 2 and 3. Type 1 is a full, 70-person team consisting of task force leaders, safety officers, structural engineers, doctors, medical team managers, canine search managers, rescue engineers and more. It's not a requirement to be Type 1, but we'd like every state to have at least that. If you have a couple of Type-3, 35-member teams in your state, could you bring them together as a Type 1?"

SUSAR also has a networking resource online at www.susar.org, where members can communicate with each other directly. Members can post a problem or request information and receive responses and advice from a number of other USAR managers. It also provides a great resource in getting new teams started.

"If a state wants to form a team, they can go to the Yahoo group and ask people from all over the United States for mobilization manuals or administrative manuals that people are willing to share," says Wehrli. "You cut and paste, change the name of the state and you have a basic manual for a state to start work."

But that is just the basics. Forming an USAR team provides benefits of localized response to the surrounding area, but also requires an investment of time and money.

Funding options will vary from state to state. The Illinois teams, for example, are members of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, and receive funding from the organization. New York's original two USAR teams were funded by a pilot program through the New York State Insurance Fund; although no longer a pilot program, New York teams still receive state funding.

Wehrli recommends trying to get congressional representatives involved. "Try to get them out to training to see what the teams can do," he says. "There's a lot of grant money out there, and politically, if you have the right people in power behind you, it really helps out."

In New York, DellaRocco says that in addition to regular state funding, the teams sometimes receive donations of equipment and training materials. Acquiring equipment was one of the major concerns for the New York teams when they were first formed and are a hurdle for any new USAR team just getting started.

Equally important is training personnel. SUSAR's online networking is good way to find out what other states are doing and get advice on how to design a training model. New York modeled training on FEMA's model, a strategy that paid off in the long run in terms of attaining FEMA-level credentialing for team members. "A technical specialist in New York state will have similar capabilities to a technical search specialist at the FEMA level or in other states," DellaRocco says. He also cautions that maintaining that level of training and bringing it to all members of the USAR team remains a continual concern.

Wehrli says that following National Fire Protection Association standards NFPA 1006, Technical Rescue Professional Qualifications, and NFPA 1670, Operations and Training for Technical Search-and-rescue Incidents, goes a long way in helping teams receive proper credentialing.

In terms of the types of training these teams receive, Wehrli's Illinois team tries to break it up into different groups each time. For rescue teams, one month will focus on shoring buildings, the next on confined spaces, and the next on rope rescue. Hazmat teams cover ways to decontaminate rescuers. Medical teams will spend one month focusing on crush injuries, and shift focus again the next month.

Training must happen on the administrative level, as well. In Illinois, managers have tabletop exercises on how to engage teams for deployment, how to set up task force operations centers, who will be deployed, how to head out, which way to go, GPS issues and more.

"We train so [that if an incident occurs], we hopefully can deploy in four hours and be on the road," Wehrli says.

Legal issues also pose potential problems for new teams. In New York, for example, career and volunteer firefighters are protected in case of injury under different types of legislation. "We had to be sure our personnel would be protected and covered in case of injury," says DellaRocco. "That was a hurdle. We also had to be sure that people would be allowed to participate if there was an incident farther away. If there are eight people in a department that also are members of USAR, will they be able to respond with the team and the department be eligible for backfill to cover these positions?"

Illinois faced a similar problem, but MABAS allows for backfill. Wehrli says the costs of covering personnel when responding to an incident is a choice that will vary depending on what states want in an USAR team and what they can afford. "There are a couple of different ways to go," he says. "In Illinois, we have a director that is part time and everyone else volunteers their own time. Some states are all-volunteer. New Jersey has six full-time people to organize and run their team."

Additionally, most teams will need to respond to incidents in neighboring states, or even farther away. New York has agreements in place to travel as far south as South Carolina. USAR teams will need to set things up in advance through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which provides form and structure to interstate mutual aid. Through EMAC, a disaster-impacted state can request and receive assistance from other member states quickly and efficiently, resolving the issues of liability and reimbursement.

Participating in an USAR can be very time-consuming, says Wehrli. Training exercises can take place as often as four days each month, and occasionally teams will do a mock deployment, setting up tents and organizing equipment as if during a real incident. "A lot of USAR teams rarely deploy," Wehrli says, "so you have to keep members interested with training and working together. There are some members that sign up and you don't see again for a year or two."

For larger states with USAR team members that live farther away, attending training exercises isn't always feasible. If the money is available, teams can cover the travel costs and hotel expenses of bring these members to events.

Forming an USAR team is not a simple task; it requires time, funding, training, adaptability and great deal of planning. But having a team in each state, and in some cases multiple teams, could see benefits that far outweigh the costs. And if SUSAR and Wehrli succeed in getting these teams credentialed to FEMA levels of training and response capabilities, then even small-town America will receive federal-level care and response at every local-level disaster.

I, Robot

During an event at Disaster City near the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, Texas, the National Institute of Standards and Technology put a number of emergency response robots to the test. Hosted by Texas A&M Engineering Extension Services and the FEMA USAR team Texas Task Force 1, ground, confined-space and wall-climbing robots faced a number of urban search-and-rescue challenges using color cameras, two-way audio, thermal imagers, chemical sensors, 3-D mapping, GPS/GIS location devices and other technologies. USAR teams were able to train with these robots and test effectiveness in potential future operations. Teams also offered insights on effectiveness and usability to the robot manufacturers to help engineer future models with the most to offer in USAR operations.

The cost-effectiveness and applicability of robots in USAR operations will vary by state and by team. There are a number of robotic USAR options available, including:

• Ground-based, portable robots that can circumnavigate large, unknown situations, such as train derailments.
• Highly agile, human-transportable robots that can lead responders through complex environments, such as rubble piles of collapsed buildings.
• Confined-space robots for deployment into small and otherwise inaccessible spaces, or for throwing into or over inaccessible areas.
• Wall-climbing robots for surveillance from elevated vantage points.

To learn more about the NIST Robot Evaluation and to see pictures and video of some of the robots that were evaluated, visit www.teexblog.blogspot.com.

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