Imagine the scene: You have just arrived at a large-scale disaster — smoke is billowing from collapsed buildings, the noise level is cacophonous, and a multitude of walking wounded are wandering about in varying degrees of medical distress. Your orders are to attach your team to one that already has responded and is tunneling through debris. Its task is to shore up a structure so that it can search for victims — whom you can hear screaming. It is dark and cold, and the air is filled with the breath from the exhausted team. The immediate challenge facing you is that none of the members of this team speak English. What do you do?

This is exactly the challenge that responders faced when they participated in the 2011 Multinational Urban Search & Rescue exercise conducted in October by the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX). The event was held at the world-renowned Disaster City in College Station, Texas, and brought together US&R teams from Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. More than 100 emergency search-and-rescue team members deployed to a mock earthquake event with the goal of honing their individual and team-building skills. The training simulation was a rich educational experience that provided valuable insight for tackling problems, both new and old.

More Than Co-Existing

Fire departments around the world are experienced in responding to major disasters, which all have one thing in common, regardless of whether they are natural or manmade: Emergency responders are required to rescue victims and save lives, regardless of the circumstances. But rarely do departments get an opportunity to practice with other departments and coordinate their unique skills, especially on a global level.

TEEX developed its training exercise to prove that professional firefighters and US&R operatives from around the world can work together in a disaster situation, regardless of language barriers and differences in operational expertise. The exercise was designed to give international and national teams a chance to practice complex technical operations while also developing all of the intangibles that are critical to their success when they deploy to actual disasters. The non-emergency environment allowed teams to build rapport, relationships, and confidence in each other and themselves that will be crucial in a real emergency.

The diversity of the participating organizations coupled with the difficulty level of the exercise ensured that teams would not be able to simply coexist; rather, they would have to fully integrate and work together. During the five-day exercise participants practiced logistics; technical searches; canine searches; shoring; breaching; lifting and moving; and command-and-control skills. The advanced structures and props in Disaster City, as well as its state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Training Center, provided an abundance of both simple and complex scenarios.

The objectives of the exercise were to:

• Conduct search-and-rescue operations in a realistic disaster environment.
• Conduct search-and-rescue operations as part of a joint international disaster scenario.
• Conduct shift change and hand-over during ongoing rescue operations. 
• Participate in logistical operations during the exercise.

Every effort was made to make the exercise as realistic as possible, based on an understanding that no textbook or manual is going to be able to train or prepare anyone sufficiently for a real disaster. Training people to use their own minds — to have a flexible approach to any given situation — is something that can be accomplished only by putting emergency responders into real-life scenarios.