By Mike O’Neal
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
Copyright 2006 Chattanooga Publishing Company
A group of 36 Chattanooga firefighters spent Monday searching for survivors inside a collapsed building at the corner of Holly Street and McCallie Avenue.
Their efforts were part of ongoing training in urban search and rescue techniques taught by former members of the New York Fire Department and funded by $1.2 million in Homeland Security grants.
The money is being used to purchase equipment and eventually train 70 members of the Chattanooga Fire Department who will serve as responders and instructors throughout Southeast Tennessee.
“We’re building a core team of 70 that will serve a 10-county area,” Chattanooga Fire Training Chief Chris Adams said. “Fourteen of the 70 will do advanced training.”
For more than a week, rescuers have been spending 10-hour days becoming familiar with the most up-to-date tools and techniques related to rescues conducted in collapsed structures.
Lead instructor John O’Connell spent 26 years with the Fire Department of New York, 18 of them as a member of the city’s Rescue Company 3. His skills were honed on the scene of the terrorist attacks in 1993 and 2001 on the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Now retired from the New York department, Mr. O’Connell has traveled the world and has taught urban search and rescue skills in China, Japan, the Middle East, Canada and the United States.
There are about 100 times more occurrences of a collapsing structure in New York than in Chattanooga, but response skills would be the same.
“Building collapses do not happen often, but they will happen,” Mr. O’Connell said.
Earthquakes in Mexico City and Oakland, Calif., not terrorist attacks, prompted the basic skills being taught to Chattanooga firefighters this week, Mr. O’Connell said.
“When I was in Oklahoma City, the FBI said it would happen again,” he said. “But Mother Nature is the largest weapon of mass destruction there is.”
Capt. Jim Manis and Lt. Terri Whiteside were among the students crawling under the toppled walls and fallen floors of the McCallie Avenue building Monday.
“This is fallout from 9/11,” Capt. Manis said. “What happens if something occurs away from New York City?”
“This prepares us,” Lt. Whiteside said. “This is real world training, where you learn to work with what you’ve got.”
The noontime temperature was 89 degrees; humidity was 48 percent. Instead of axes, pikes and fire hoses, alternating teams of firefighters used power tools and bare hands to clear away tons of crumbling Sheetrock, concrete blocks, bricks and shingles.
“It is very reassuring -- for the firefighters and the citizens -- to know we’re better equipped and trained for a response,” Chattanooga Fire Tactical Services Chief Chuck Nichols said. “We’ve been working toward this for several years.”