The Oregon Office of State Fire Marshal staff and members of the incident management team program are organizing the second annual full-scale, all-hazards exercise involving the state’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, hazardous materials response teams, and one of the state’s three incident management teams.

Oregon's Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) program provides highly specialized, technical rescue services to local jurisdictions that are overwhelmed by natural or manmade disasters. Oregon Task Force 1 (OR-TF1) assists in structural collapse and technical rescue incidents statewide, at the request of the Governor. Covering multiple jurisdictions, the Team is organized geographically in north and south regional response teams.

Oregon’s USAR team is composed of members from Albany Fire Department, Clackamas County Fire District #1, Corvallis Fire Department, the Department of Public Safety and Standards, Eugene Fire and EMS, Gresham Fire Department, Hillsboro Fire Department, Oregon Department of Transportation, Oregon Emergency Management, Oregon State Sherriff's Association, Portland Fire & Rescue, Salem Fire Department, Springfield Fire Department, and Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue.

This year’s exercise will use an unoccupied fabrication building on a technology campus in Aloha, simulating a collapse of a manufacturing facility. In advance of the exercise, team members are prepping the building to simulate collapsed walls and roofs, fractured piping, leaking chemical tanks, and more. Portland Fire & Rescue will be sending eight firefighters that are also members of Oregon's USAR Task force to participate in the exercise.

During the exercise, props will be breached and cut with simulated floor penetration and “victim” rescue similar to recent rescue efforts after the Haiti earthquake. Hazmat team members will conduct recon missions to identify and mitigate leaks and spills from containers, tanks, and piping. Incident management team members will manage the operations.

These annual exercises are designed to test the operational effectiveness of combined rescues using the state’s all-hazards emergency response resources to meet the standards established for emergency response and continuous improvement goals.

Stay tuned to the blog for further information and coverage of the simulated exercise!

 Portland Fire & Rescue

 We Respond: Always Ready, Always There

 February 28, 2011

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