Newsletter

Sunday, October 9, 2011 Shrewsbury Volunteers participated in a building collapse drill this morning with other units from the York County Advanced Technical Rescue Team (York ATR).  York ATR is comprised of Shrewsbury, Dover Twp, Yoe and Hanover Fire Departments.  All four departments respond with resources and personnel to technical rescue incidents in York and surrounding counties.

York ATR trains quarterly in order to keep skill levels at an acceptable level.  Training is rotated from water/ice rescue, trench, confined space, rope rescue and today's training drill- building collapse.

Dover Township and the Dover Township Fire Department hosted today’s training in a two story steel and concrete two story structure that will be torn down in the near future.  The simulated drill was a reported earthquake in the central Susquehanna Valley.  Multiple USAR events are reported to be in progress so the personnel on this event are "on their own" with whatever equipment they have on site.

On arrival York ATR personnel interviewed civilians on site and discovered the rear wall has completely collapse, the roof collapsed into the second floor and one person is reported missing in the collapse.  Teams were formed, an incident action plan was devised, and the rescue proceeded.

During the drill crews improved their skills on Incident Command structure, team communications, accountability, shoring, extraction of trapped patients, lifting operations and patient removal.  Crews handled the training scenario professionally and sucessfully completed the tasks.  During the drill operations were halted occasionally to provide "teaching points" for newer team members.  All in all the day was a good refresher and first time exercise for the newbies.

Thank you to Dover Township Station 9 for hosting the drill.  It was a good learning event.