Personnel from Burton Fire District (SC) were joined by South Carolina Regional US&R Response Team 4 (Hilton Head Island Fire/Rescue and Bluffton Township Fire Departments) and South Carolina Urban Search and Rescue Task Force One to work a simulated collapse during the Vigilant Guard 2008 exercises held in Beaufort County, SC.

These emergency responders provided an excellent response to the incident, demonstrating exactly how the best case scenario should work: well-trained local responders who respond, work to take care of the emergency at their level of training, and calling for regionalized response for more complex operations, and subsequently supported by state response as needed. All of these responders did an excellent job and their sponsoring organizations have a lot to be proud of.

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Massive emergency response exercises continue in Beaufort County
By JEREMY HSIEH
jhsieh@beaufortgazette.com
Published Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Firefighters on Monday stood atop a mound of mangled steel rods and hunks of concrete and dirt, studying the remains of a collapsed building for a way to reach the victims trapped in cavities beneath the debris.

The contrast of men and dust and urban shrapnel evoked images of ground zero in Manhattan, though there was no tragedy to mourn at this manmade rubble pile near Laurel Bay. The "trapped" victims were members of the Army National Guard playing roles in Vigilant Guard, a massive emergency response exercise testing the troops and local first responders in the event of a powerful earthquake centered in Beaufort County.

The rubble pile -- which several groups will work on during the Vigilant Guard exercises that run through Thursday -- was Mike Shannon's handiwork. Shannon's company, Oklahoma City-based Response International Group, built the rubble pile at a cost of about $200,000 from 2,000 tons of concrete and 200 strategically placed concrete tubes that serve as tunnels, he said.

After Monday's group finished, it was time to bring in heavy equipment to rebuild the sections of the pile the emergency workers cleared.

"Cock and reset, cock and reset," Shannon said.

The Burton Fire District committed most of its manpower Monday to clearing the front section of the pile, while two firefighters on the opposite side inspected crevices for signs of life.

"What's your name?" one firefighter asked after spotting a survivor. "Elvis? We've been looking for you for 40 years."

Military and media observers crowded around the crevice, waiting for the rescue and ready with a punch line. It took a few hours of digging, scraping, hammering and bolt-cutting before Elvis had left the building.

Meanwhile, a few miles away at the Burton Fire District's Pinewood station, a small Guard team donned harnesses and spelunking helmets for a crawl through a dark building. On its way from the ground level up to a small, open-air landing about 25 feet above, the team located four injured people.

Neither helicopter support nor the appropriate rescue basket would be available for the extraction, so team members strapped their first casualty into a harness hooked up to a pulley and three men on the ground and asked her to take a leap of faith.

"It's not going to be a fun ride," the exercise's controller, Andy Lancaster of Response International Group, warned her.

"I've got seven kids!" she said before putting her faith in the ropes and muscle over gravity. She made it down without incident.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, who retired from the South Carolina Army National Guard as a colonel in 2003, was visiting exercise sites as an observer Monday. He said he had never participated in such elaborate exercises in his days and that the Guard's capabilities for evacuations had greatly progressed in recent years.

About 3,000 people are involved in the exercise, which local officials say is providing a once-in-a-lifetime chance to gain real-world experience from a catastrophic emergency.