Search-and-rescue team makes bridge drill territory Sunday, August 5, 2001
NORTHAMPTON — Traffic across the Coolidge Bridge is frequently described as nothing short of disastrous, but the bridge yesterday served as a training ground for another sort of disaster.
The actual kind.
More than sixty members of the Beverly-based Massachusetts Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, descended upon and inside the bridge as part of a daylong drill.
Motorists caught in the slow westbound crawl across the bridge yesterday may have noticed workers in hard hats buzzing around the decking, a sight that is hardly unusual since the $19.8 million rehab began a week ago. Close inspection of the lettering on the hard hats would not show "Cianbro Construction," however, but "Emergency Rescue."
The drill simulated a search-and-rescue mission inside a collapsed building.
"In this particular exercise, we're coming upon this bridge with a significant explosion and collapse in the bridge — not that bridges often explode," said task force member Mark Foster.
The bridge and the construction were incidental in its selection, he said. The spaces inside the bridge's foundation and concrete abutments provided the ideal environment for a simulated drill. The bowels of the bridge offered tight, confined spaces with poor ventilation similar to what is found in a collapsed building.
The concrete rubble from a week's worth of construction that lay strewn around under the bridge presented a nice touch, said Alan Fisher, a structural engineer from Portland, Maine, who volunteers as the task force planning manager.
The drill was in planning for eight months, he said.
The task force will be camped at Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee through today.
It drove to the bridge with 62 people, four search and rescue dogs and 40,000 pounds of equipment and enough food, water, gasoline and supplies to last three days.
FEMA operates 28 urban rescue teams nationwide.
"The whole thing started in 1992 in response to the Mexico City earthquake, where 150 people were rescued and 150 people died rescuing them," Fisher said. "The feeling was, there was a need for a heavy-duty rescue capability in the United States."
The Massachusetts task force operates like a volunteer fire department, albeit one spread out over six states.
When called, members assemble in Beverly and head out to the site of a disaster, either by military air transport or in a convoy of trucks.
The urban team is called in to assist local authorities in disasters that could easily overwhelm local resources, he said.
"Almost every city has some building, not necessarily 20 stories, but four or five that could collapse and be more than the local command could handle," he said.
In December 1999, the team was called to Worcester to assist in the unsuccessful rescue of six firefighters who died in a warehouse fire.
"I always think of the Hartford Civic Center collapse in 1978. What if there had been a basketball game going on at the time?" Fisher said.
The drills provide realistic conditions and offer a realistic appraisal of how team members work under pressure.
"The talkers go quiet. The quiet people begin talking when they are under stress," he said. "You have to recognize the signs."
Fisher said the degree of training has made him aware of how much he hopes the team does not ever have to be called anywhere.
The bridge training was helpful, he said. "I hope we never have to come back."
By PATRICK JOHNSON