From Texas to Moreton - USAR training comes home

With the vivid images of devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami fresh in our minds, the enhanced role of the Fire and Rescue Service seems more relevant than ever.

USAR operators train in shoring, cutting, drilling and use of search cameras and listening devices. Photo: Dave Dickson

The new facilities at the Fire Service College make the UK self-sufficient in USAR training.  Photo: ODPM

Here FRS takes a look at the range of new training facilities at the Fire Service College for Urban Search and Rescue (USAR).

These facilities have been funded at a cost of £6.2 million by the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG's) New Dimension programme to ensure that the UK has a year-round, all weather USAR training capability.

Until spring 2004, USAR training on a large scale had never taken place in the UK. Between June 2003 and April 2004, over 500 personnel from the UK Fire and Rescue Service were trained at Texas A & M University to provide the UK with an interim USAR capability.

All staff attending the Texas course had first passed through a preliminary four-day tool skills familiarisation course held at the Fire Service College. This enabled delegates arriving in the US to make the best use of the time and facilities provided in Texas.

The Fire Service College used the Texas training to form the basis of its own courses, and is now one of the principal providers of USAR training in the world.

New USAR training buildings at Moreton

The Fire Service College site at Moreton-in-Marsh now has the world’s largest indoor USAR training facility. All levels of USAR response training are available there, from ‘hands-on’, front-line response to strategic and tactical command in a multi-agency scenario.

The USAR training centre enables students to practise rescue techniques in a safe, realistic environment, and provides them with an enhanced range of specialist skills.

Three large indoor skills training rigs are housed in the main new USAR building at the College:

• The ‘T’ rig has three enclosed tunnels, connected in a T shape, for search and rescue training in confined spaces.
• The breaking and breaching skills rig allows students to practise basic tool skills for cutting through concrete with drills, breakers, saws and cutters.
• The multi-floor rig represents a multi-level collapsed building. Here, concrete slab floors are mounted at varying angles so that students can undertake search and rescue for simulated or live casualties in voids under, or between, the floors.

These training rigs have been designed to comply with the highest standards of health and safety, and have powerful dust extraction facilities.

Two new training rigs have been built outside the main training building:

• A two-storey shoring rig allows students to practise internal and external shoring methods and tie-backs.
• A combination rig, the largest of the new rigs, simulates the scene of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma after the bomb attack.

This rig has a rubble pile and a network of tunnels for searching with dogs and search cameras.

New Dimension has funded the construction of a block of classrooms as well as garages, which house the ‘prime mover’ USAR vehicles and the ‘modules’ containing high-volume pumps and other USAR equipment.

Twelve kennels, using prefabricated kennel units, are being built at the College to house rescue dogs trained by the United Kingdom Fire Services Search and Rescue Team (UKFSSART).

USAR training, using the new training rigs, began at the College in April 2004. Ninety weeks of USAR training courses have already been scheduled, with 30 places available on each course. Volunteers for USAR training are screened and selected by their services.

It takes three weeks to train one USAR operator in the various skills required, including shoring, cutting, drilling and the use of search cameras and listening devices.

USAR training is also delivered locally within the Service. Regional training will accelerate as the USAR prime mover vehicles and equipment are rolled out, using CD-ROMs, videos and other training facilities supplied by New Dimension, and trainers who have been trained at the Fire Service College.

USAR courses at the College are particularly useful for services without a UKFSSART team, according to Mark Coleman, USAR co-ordinator at the Cheshire Fire Service. The fire personnel he has sent to the College have found the USAR courses very worthwhile and have cascaded the skills they have learned on return to their services.

The new facilities at the Fire Service College are vital for building and maintaining the USAR skills base. They help to make the UK self-sufficient in terms of USAR training, and the College into a centre of excellence in USAR training for the UK and the world.