Norris spent most of last week participating in a search exercise sponsored by Buncombe County (our home county) and the State of NC. The exercise is run every two years on a remote part of the Biltmore estate that covers several thousand acres of rugged terrain and farmland. In addition to being a chance for Search and Rescue teams to get some practice in tracking lost persons, it also is a chance to exercise local Incident Management Teams that would oversee any type of large scale disaster in our area. The photo below is of the small town of trailers that reported to the command post for the exercise. Most of these trailers were not for housing people, but rather housed various command functions for the exercise (communications, logistics, planning, command staff, etc.). The search teams that responded were actually housed in large tents that are located a few hundred yards away, out of view of the camera.
Instead of being a volunteer participant in the exercise, Norris was actually employed by the county to help run the communications for the entire event. He, along with one other person, were responsible for setting up the county's mobile communications bus (including erecting the 35 foot antenna mast attached to the bus).
Communications duties also included operating the radio cache trailer, a glorified horse trailer that stores over a hundred portable radios that can be issued to searchers (or other disaster workers). The trailer is heated and air conditioned and has its own generator, so you could sleep in the trailer if need be on a prolonged disaster.
Inside the trailer, this is a picture of the work bench/desk where radios brought in by the searchers from various non-local jurisdictions can be re-programmed for channels to be used in the search.
The other side of the trailer houses state-owned radios that can be issued as needed, although the need to keep good track of the radios is apparent when you consider that each of these radios cost up to $5000 (then multiple by 100 radios to see how much the inventory is worth).
As part of the support to our small city of rescuers, the Greensboro FD sent their mobile shower trailer so all the searchers could have hot showers all week.
The hub of the activity was the large tent we called the circus tent. It served as a dining hall as well as a place for meetings. It can be heated or cooled, but our weather was about perfect, so we didn't need either. The support trailer to the left houses an industrial size kitchen on wheels, complete with refrigerators, freezers, ovens, stoves, and counter space to prepare food.
The Red Cross also provided one of their kitchen trailers which served as the food warming station. The food was good and plentiful all week. Searchers could get food whenever they returned from their field assignments.
Lunchtime. This photo shows just half of the inside of the tent.
We even had a hospital on wheels to support the event. This hospital bus is a new acquisition for the City of Asheville and Buncombe County.
The hospital bus has 16 beds or stretcher spaces. This is the view from the central nurses station looking at the rear half of the bus.
The nurses station is seen below. The bus has been used once so far in a real emergency at the fire in Asheville last summer that killed one fireman and injured a number of others.
Here, one of the K9 search teams gets a last minute briefing from the Sheriff's Dept before departing on their mission. The scenario started with two "special needs" adults being abducted at gun point from the nearby Farmer's Market. A SWAT team went into the woods and located and captured the armed abductors, but the two victims fled deeper into the woods. The victims were afraid of the searchers and hid from them, making it harder to locate them. In reality, the two "victims" were always aware of where the searchers were and tried to stay one step ahead of them to prolong the fun.
Every 12 hours a new Incident Command team took over the operation. As communications support, Norris and his co-worker in communications were part of each of these teams. Each 12 hour shift included several planning meetings, such as the one pictured below, where each member of the command staff went over maps and assignments covered by the previous shifts, in order to come up with a plan for the next shift coming on duty. Over 300 participants were involved in the exercise.
The two lost victims were finally located around noon on Saturday and the exercise was able to wind down. For more details on the exercise, as covered in the local press along with 15 additional pictures, you can check out the link below.
1 comment:
This was obviously a huge effort undertaken by your area emergency response people. Thank you for sharing all the interesting photos with us. I hope the organizers were pleased with how it all went and came away with what needs improvement before the next real emergency happens.
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