Emergency responders hone skills
MUDDY CREEK TWP — Dozens of volunteer emergency rescue personnel from Butler and surrounding counties came together Saturday to hone their land and water search skills in Moraine State Park during an annual regional training exercise.
Rescue teams from 14 Western Pennsylvania counties brought their boats, rain gear and their dogs to the Bear Run boat launch on the shore of Lake Arthur for the Region 13 Fall Exercise.
The large-area search exercise challenged the responders in multiple simultaneous simulated emergency situations, said Mark Adomaitis, chief of Team 300, Butler County's Water Rescue team.In one scenario, water rescue teams used boats and high-tech equipment to locate a trailer that fell into the lake from the Route 422 bridge in April.“They had to locate that using side scan sonar,” Adomaitis said.The other two scenarios involved finding human victims.
Search and rescue personnel and their K-9s found pseudo human remains that were submerged in the lake, while water and land searchers rescued a training dummy that had been placed in the water near a shoreline.“That's a 200-pound training dummy,” Adomaitis said. “They had to locate him, place him in a boat and take him back to EMS for treatment.”A shirt, boot, hat and vest — debris typically found when a car crashes into a body of water — were scattered around and also had to be found, he said.In addition, K-9 teams practiced finding actors serving as lost subjects and human remains.“We placed lost subjects in different locations. We give the dogs a scent article and they find them,” said Kathy Otruba, commander of the Lower Kiski EMS Search and Rescue team, who ran the K-9 exercises.
Dogs trained in area scenting found human remains hidden in several places in an 80-acre area, she said.Paramedics that make up Team 200, the county tactical medical team, were there to support the search and rescue teams and practice providing on-scene care to victims, said Denny Crawford, team commander.The training dummy found by water rescuers was brought to paramedics to be treated and prepared for a flight on a medical helicopter, he said.
Flight preparation includes wrapping the victim for warmth, he added.“You never know what circumstances the next emergency will have — different injuries, night and day,” Crawford said.The flight aboard a LifeFlight helicopter would take the victim to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh because it has a hyperbaric chamber that sometimes is used to help drowning victims, said Nico Soler, of the Allegheny Health Network.He said the helicopter also can assist with ground searches.Participating in the exercise were rescue teams from Jefferson Hills, Elizabeth, Etna, Stowe Township and Pittsburgh from Allegheny County; K-9 teams from Armstrong, Lawrence and Allegheny counties; Butler County Emergency Management Services; and Portersville Emergency Medical Services.
