The 911th Technical Rescue Engineer Company take part in a simulated highline rescue.
In the scenario, a teenage boy
trying to cross the Roanoke River off the Blue Ridge Parkway on a cable got stuck. Spc. Grant White had the team set up horizontal and vertical lines to rescue the trapped teen.
Soldiers in the 911th Technical Rescue Engineer Company come and go, serving a couple years in the Military District of Washington unit that prepares for extracting people from peril and then moving on to other jobs in the military.
Staff Sgt. Antonio Serna might be the only heavy combat engineer who has been back more than once.
‘‘We get them in, give them a few weeks crash course, and ask them to continue learning and developing.”
Eleven of the more experienced members of the 911th showed what can be done with that training when they took part in Rescue Challenge 2008 in Roanoke, Va., competing with nine other teams all of them emergency responders from jurisdictions around Virginia, D.C. and Maryland.
‘‘The boys really showed their mettle,” Capt. David Dietz, commander of the 911th reported, forgetting for the moment that one of the team members was Spc. Hattie Lynch, a Soldier and a woman. With the fastest time in half of the eight events participated in over the four-day challenge.
The company certainly earned respect and not a little ‘‘bragging rights” — for the Soldiers as well as the 911th, 12th Aviation Battalion, and Air Operations Group.
Serna and another NCO on the sergeant first class promotion list, Staff Sgt. Julian Oliver, ‘‘did a great job molding the team,” Dietz said.
They trained for two weeks before going down with one of the unit's rescue trucks and other support vehicles, not knowing what they would face.
Rescue Challenge is an annual event. For the past two years it was held in Northern Virginia. This year and next it will be in Roanoke.
Similar to Best Sapper and Best Ranger in the Army, Rescue Challenge assembles the finest first responders skilled in technical rescue. The competition started 14 years ago to create an environment for experts to foster relationships, hone technical skills, develop new techniques, determine bragging rights and have fun. 12th Aviation Battalion Executive Officer Maj. Robert J. Cook was with the unit during the week for risk management and support, which included photographing the team during the events.
‘‘There were 10 teams and 10 events,” Cook reported.
Within four days each team negotiates eight rescue scenarios. Given time restrictions and regulated safety oversight from OSHA, NFPA and DFP standards, the team must use skills and tools beyond what is required for the normal firefighter. 911th TREC is the only DoD team to compete against seasoned teams such as Fairfax County, Arlington County, Roanoke County and many others. The teams drew lots to see which eight events they would face, two each day, morning and afternoon, Monday to Thursday. The 911th did ‘‘exceptionally well” in all of its events, particularly notable because compared to the other teams they were outmanned.
‘‘The Army team from Belvoir has the smallest squad. The average is 25 and the next smallest is 19. But they have the best teamwork and communication than any other team out here yet,” the facilitator at one site declared. ‘‘Their skills are just as good as the most seasoned firefighter,” Charles King said at Dixie Cavern after the 911th bested the previous best by 11 minutes, extracting spelunker, who had fallen to the bottom of a cliff inside the cavern, in an hour and 30 minutes.
The cave rescue did not tax the team as much as some of the other events, where having the extra manpower was a real advantage, Serna noted, previewing the week’s effort. ‘‘We were smoked at the end of each day, and then would get up the next day and do it all over again.”
Each task presented was tackled with military discipline. ‘‘We have that rank structure,” Serna said. ‘‘We know who is in charge.” To train, the incident commander position rotated, giving most of the members on the team the responsibility of leadership. ‘‘They had to make a decision and stick to it,” Serna said.
At the cave, Spc. Robert Huffman had the team set up a lowering device outside the cavern, then the rescuers were able to descend, ‘‘package” the mock victim and his broken ankles and make the extraction.
The morning of day three, Lynch was named incident commander, Cook noted. Workers had entered a 30-foot-tall tank used by a Roanoke manufacturer to store creosote for treating railroad ties and were overcome by the fumes.
‘‘Lynch maintained her composure when the facilitator informed her of the catastrophe. After requesting the necessary HAZMAT paperwork, the previous entry permit, and gathering more facts, she ran back to her team and organized them into their responsibilities.
After some brief confusion with the facilitator over the required harness to use, the team was able to put its SABA (supplied air breathing apparatus) in use and finish in an hour and 48 minutes, another fastest time.
‘‘Each member of the team was equally skilled and can function as the ‘IC’ and interact, coordinate, and liaison with other agencies such as FEMA, DHS, FBI and others,” Cook said.
Other tasks included:
Rescue of a mired ‘‘horse,” an event that drew coverage from the Roanoke Times. Serna acted as incident commander and set up a lift to hoist the PVC contraption from the muck.
The Fairfax team went in as a group and got the fastest time lifting the animal out, ‘‘but they killed it,” Serna laughed. Part of the 911th’s approach included placing a bucket around the muzzle. Since the horse would have been sedated, there was a danger of suffocation.
Rescue of a casualty pinned under a 48-inch concrete piping at the bottom of a ‘‘Y” trench, one of tougher events for an 11-man team. Sgt. Cody Sterling ran the operation in a little over two hours.
A highline rescue of a teenage boy trying to cross the Roanoke River off the Blue Ridge Parkway on a cable. Spc. Grant White had the team set up horizontal and vertical lines to effect a rescue.
‘‘We had to run up the hill a couple of times,” Serna said, noting more manpower might have kept the team’s legs fresher. ‘‘Fairfax beat us by 14 minutes.”
A vertical rescue from the landmark Star of Roanoke on Mill Mountain. Two stranded protesters who were hanging banners 100 feet above the ground had to be taken safely off the metal structure. The team, working under Spc. Steve Harris, got the first one down in the fastest time, a bit over one hour. The team was fatigued and ‘‘the pucker factor was up,” Serna said. The second person was taken off in about two hours and 40 minutes.
A gas tanker lying atop two vehicles that had passengers. The lifting, cribbing, moving, stabilization and rescue was a best time of 1:37 under Oliver.
An event called the ‘‘Screaming Jackass” that had to be worked only with manual tools. Set up more as an obstacle course, the team transitioned through a variety of disciplines as they had to move a wheel-less boxcar along a railroad track, easier if the team could get the car's carriage on the track and under the 74,000 pound boxcar.
‘‘We had the most fun with this,” Serna said. There was no incident commander. ‘‘We just all got into it and made it happen.”
The time of 1:25 capped the week's success.
In addition to those mentioned, team members included: Spc. Brandon Fossum, Spc. James Hubbard, Spc. John Walker, Spc. Robert Huffman and Spc. Wil Lugo.
‘‘It was an honor to be on the team,” Sema said.
‘‘The 911th TREC has developed a unique, regimented, and compressed course”“ Cook noted. It teaches all members of the company ‘‘whether mechanic or administration” to operate in rescue situations.
‘‘We still have all our Soldier responsibilities,” Serna noted. ‘‘We know our next assignment will probably be deployment in the Global War on Terror, so that is a major focus of the company, not just the technical rescue.”
‘‘As a commander, I could not be prouder,” Lt. Col. James Bryant said of the unit. The team was small as most had to remain at home.‘‘We are in a constant state of readiness,” he said.
‘‘The other teams have a lot of experience,” Serna said. ‘‘It's great to be accepted and learn with them.”
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