The most dangerous landscape imaginable

Urban Search and Rescue trainees clear rubble in a collapsed multi-story car park as part of an exercise at the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service Academy in Brisbane.

Photos by Sean Burton, SOCOMD

LCpl Mathew Connolly- Cavanagh, ERS, works under a collapsed structure to clear a route to the casualty.

An earthquake measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale hit the South-East Queensland area of Whyte Island at midnight, resulting in a number of casualties and the destruction of several buildings, including a seven and a four storey residential building, a three-storey car park, a four storey commercial complex and a nightclub.

Sappers from the Emergency Response Squadron (ERS) are called in to support their civilian counterparts from the Queensland emergency services. Cpl Sean Burton reports.

This was the scenario for 48-hour exercise, during which ERS members participated in the search and rescue of simulated casualties deep under the rubble of destroyed buildings, in conditions that were dirty, cramped, hot, sometimes flooded and not for the claustrophobic.

It’s definitely not a job for everyone, but for members of the ERS it is a new skill they have had to master to meet new threat. Given the threat posed by terrorism in our region, IRR has raised a capability known as Urban Search Rescue (USAR).

USAR is an integrated, emergencyservice response beyond normal rescue capabilities.

Its purpose is to locate, provide initial medical care and remove entrapped people from damaged structures and other hazardous environments safely and quickly.

The ADF USAR capability is located within Holsworthy-based elements of the ERS within the IRR, which is part of Special Operations Command (SOCOMD).

The standard role of the ERS is provide initial emergency response the ADF in order to minimise loss of life, destruction of material, capabilities and environment by accident, fire or hazardous materiel.

As part of SOCOMD, the ERS also has the capability to accompany Combat Search and Rescue operations when necessary.

OC ERS Maj Paul Murphy, responsible for raising the capability, says the ADF USAR capability will be a major contribution to force protection, as well as being able to enhance civilian emer- as being able to enhance civilian emergency gency services.

“The ADF will have a USAR asset, which is capable of deploying offshore ffshore and conducting sustained operations and conducting sustained operations in either a conventional or hazardous in either a conventional or hazardous material environment in the event of material environment in the event of a military or terrorist direct action,” he says.

Larger than a civilian task force, ADF USAR Task Force may consist USAR technicians, high risk searchers, signallers, caterers, plant operators, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, a CBRR Sqn decontamination element and a force protection element.

Some these elements may be drawn from outside the IRR. Maj Murphy and two soldiers of the ERS recently attended the USAR Category Two (CAT2) course at the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service Academy in Brisbane.

The Academy boasts a purpose built Urban Search and Rescue training facility. Under a football field sized pile rubble and concrete slabs is a network of culvert pipes filled with debris, household goods and building materials, which present a number of safe but realistic situations for urban search teams to hone their rescue skills.

Maj Murphy says the CAT2 technicians are the backbone of an USAR task force and are trained to work both above and below ground at incidents involving major structural collapse.

“Specialist training is given in many areas including building construction and engineering, collapse patterns, vertical and confined space rescue tunnelling, concrete cutting, heavy lifting and seismic search patterns,” he says.

The culmination of the three-week course was a 48-hour exercise with realistic earthquake scenario.