On November 17th - 20th, 1999, CARS sponsored a concrete building collapse class which is now the largest such project the squad has ever taken on. More than two years in the planning; the first ever of its type of training in Central Virginia, and one of only a handful of classes conducted Nationwide. The class was made up of individuals from the following organizations:
Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad
Charlottesville City Public Works
Western Albemarle Rescue Squad
Harrisonburg Fire Department
Albemarle County Fire Rescue Division
Knoxville (TN) Rescue Squad
Knoxville (TN) Fire Department
Charlotte (NC) Fire Department
Roanoke Fire & Emergency Medical Services
Washington County/Johnson City (TN) Emergency Management Agency
Sarasota County (FL) Fire Department
Chesterfield County Fire Department
Over 60 technical rescue specialists from as far away as Sarasota County Florida converged on Charlottesville for this 30-hour intense, challenging and difficult training course. The students conducted intensive hands-on applications of heavy concrete lifting operations, breaching and breaking walls and emergency building shoring.
The instructors were from FEMA Task Force 1 (VA-TF1) and responded to the bombings in Oklahoma City & Nairobi, the earthquakes in the Philippines, Armenia, Turkey and Taiwan.
Chuck Swecker (Roanoke City Fire & Rescue) and Josh Hilton (CARS TRT) try to manipulate a heavy hydraulic hammer jack as they breach into a concrete vault. Most of the class involved scenarios like this to show the students how difficult concrete can be to gain access through.
This is the class site. We were very fortunate to have a local real estate developer donate the land to us, which was only blocks away from our rescue squad building and right across the street from a concrete plant! One thing about having a class like this is that you need a lot of vendors donating time & materials, otherwise the class will be cost prohibitive.
One of the things we learned was that heavy rescue usually means confining spaces. In this station, students are taught the use of concrete-cutting chain saws with a limited amount of space to work in. Before the chunk was cut, it had to be bolted and tied off to prevent it from falling into the hole.
In this exercise, students are taught how to manipulate a very large and heavy block of concrete using only simple tools (such as levers and rollers). The block of concrete is taken around an obstacle course to show students that hydraulic tools aren't really needed to move heavy weight, as long as you know what you are doing!
Part of the obstacle course involves bridging a span that is longer than any piece of wood available on-site. It takes a lot of thought to overcome the simplest of problems.
Here another obstacle is met and overcome. At this station, students must raise one slab of concrete high enough to allow the concrete block (known as "Little Mo") to pass under it. The slab can be raised only with pry bars and is held by cribbing, which at this height is very tedious...
Another angle of the massive amount of cribbing required to hold the slab steady in the air while "Little Mo" passes underneath. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what will happen if "Little Mo" hits a cribbing tower...
The last obstacle involves passing "Little Mo" over an object using a couple of 6 x 6 boards and rope (and a lot of manpower!). Most of the techniques we learned were used by early Egyptians to build their pyramids centuries ago.
CONCRETE '99 LESSONS
