Marin rescue team trains for natural disasters

Marin County Urban Search and Rescue Regional Task Force 1 practiced saving people from the rubble of an earthquake during a drill in Point Reyes Station.

More than 30 rescuers trained in Point Reyes Station this week for the aftermath of an 8.0-magnitude earthquake.

The Marin County Urban Search and Rescue Regional Task Force 1 drill was held Thursday at the Commodore Webster Training Facility. The team prepares for deployment to major natural disasters if needed by first responders.

“It’s California, we don’t know what Mother Nature is going to throw at us,” said Marin County Fire Department Battalion Chief Graham Groneman, a task force supervisor.

Members of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services evaluated the task force’s training.

“The goal is if there is a big earthquake tomorrow night, the same team will go to work and take care of whatever that scenario is,” said Larry Collins, a deputy chief of CalOES. “They can do it efficiently and safely using whatever equipment they have.”

Ross Valley fire Capt. Oscar Arenas had just finished his shift when he was dispatched to Point Reyes Station. He managed the rescue teams and informed them about victims.

“We did very well,” Arenas said. “There was a lot to do all at once.”

Team members searched for victims under a pile of three smashed cars and broken concrete slabs; brought a search dog to locate a trapped person in a former U.S. Coast Guard apartment complex; and used a ladder to extract a victim from a tower’s second-story window.

Jennifer Vega, a student in Marin County’s Fire Foundry education program, pretended to be an unconscious patient while she was placed on a stretcher and carefully lowered from the tower window.

“I felt super comfortable, like I was getting hugged,” she said. “I was supposed to be unconscious, and I tried not to smile.”

Teams spent two hours using buzzsaws and jackhammers to make “clean breaches” or to cut openings in thick concrete slabs. Earlier, they used a thin camera scope to locate victims, represented by dummies, that were trapped under the slabs. In one case, rescuers had to carefully drill a hole through a flat slab in order to insert the rescue camera.

Groneman said responders must coordinate with each other and be careful not to injure the victim when they cut through the concrete.

“Breaking concrete — even though it’s hard work, it’s the easy part,” he said.

Rich Riechel, a leader of search-and-rescue operations for the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, said he saw a dummy’s leg and torso in the camera monitor.

One dummy was found in a hole that was 5 feet under a slab. Firefighters had the challenge of cutting through rebar to make a large, pyramid-shaped opening through the concrete. They sprayed the blade with water while concrete dust rose and occasional sparks flew. The blade could only cut a depth of 8 to 9 inches at a time.

“Given the problem we had, I think we did pretty good, I think we rocked it,” Riechel said.

Elsewhere, a team sawed wooden beams and planks to secure a damaged stairway for rescuers to access an apartment’s second story.

Besides the labor-intensive rescues, firefighters also handled the simple scenario of aiding an injured pedestrian lying under a woodpile. Fire Foundry student Giov Alipio pretended to be the victim and was carried out on a stretch after receiving a triage card.

“I got a sneak peak of what I could be doing in the future,” said Alipio, a College of Marin student considering a firefighting career.