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Category 5 hurricane training held at Butler County Community College

The Pennsylvania Helicopter Aquatic Rescue Team conducted a "Category 5 Hurricane Jessica" exercise on BC3's main campus, Thursday, June 27.

“Hurricane!” they cried, and hopped in their helicopters to descend on Butler County Community College.

First one, then two, then three and finally four metal birds landed at the school, ready to mobilize and rescue a seemingly endless number of Hurricane Jessica’s victims from the storm-ravaged campus. As a rope lowered from one chopper, a second’s blades whirred to life. As the second’s crew lifted a man from the roof of a car caught in the storm’s floodwaters, a third bird rose to the skies.

Butler County Community College lent its public safety training center to the Pennsylvania Helicopter Aquatic Rescue Team (PA HART) Thursday for a marathon of high-powered emergency training. Their training aimed to run the group through several difficult rescue scenarios rapidly in a simulation of the intense missions they’d fly in natural disasters. In this case, they aimed to simulate a Category 5 hurricane named Hurricane Jessica.

This is an excerpt — read the full article and learn more about the training in Friday’s Butler Eagle.

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