Firefighters learn structure collapse rescue at Beach school

VIRGINIA BEACH

Huddled around a 1-ton concrete block, a dozen firefighters quickly set to work. A few used steel bars to pry the mass off the ground, while others slipped metal rollers underneath. Then they pushed toward a piece of wood.

Alex Perricone, from Baltimore, stood and handed his metal roller to another firefighter. Then he grasped a rope and pulled it taut.

"This is my favorite part," he said. He and another man pulled the block across the rollers and up wooden beams fashioned as a ramp.

The exercise, in which the concrete would be pulled, pushed and hoisted over and through a variety of obstacles, is one of several in this week's Structural Collapse Training course in Virginia Beach. It is coordinated by Virginia Task Force 2, a Virginia Beach-based urban search-and-rescue team comprised of firefighters from Hampton Roads departments.

The 10th annual training course drew about 100 firefighters from across the country. It's designed to teach rescue tactics, including how to breach reinforced concrete and shore up partially collapsed walls and ceilings.

"We literally try to come up with any scenario we can conceive of," said task force member and Virginia Beach Battalion Chief Dave Hutcheson. "That way, if they come across it for real, they will have already seen it once in training."

A few firefighters crawled into small concrete tubes and drilled through the walls. Others used power saws on concrete slabs, simulating the rescue efforts after the 1989 earthquake that collapsed an Oakland, Calif., freeway.

Some stood on a ladder, or in a metal basket suspended above the ground, while using a torch to cut rebar or steel beams. The scenarios simulated circumstances faced at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 and after the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building, where crews couldn't always reach debris on foot, Hutcheson said.

In other stations on the city's fire training grounds along South Birdneck Road, teams worked with a crane operator to fasten and remove wood poles and large cages from piles of debris.

Ken Aldridge of Salt Lake City, on his second trip to the training session, served as squad leader for a team working to stabilize a wall. The training, he said, was invaluable.

"Not many places offer training like this, and not many get this kind of support," he said.

Shawn Day, (757) 222-5131, shawn.day@pilotonline.com