Trail Alert!
Essex County Technical Rescue Team will be conducting a two day exercise in Bradley Palmer State Park from 8am-8pm on Monday (6/8) and Tuesday (6/9). There will be a National Guard presence as well as low flying helicopters.
From Essex County Technical Rescue Team’s Facebook Page:
Tech Rescue Teams from eastern Mass including the Essex County as well as members of the National Guard are preparing for a disastrous hurricane scheduled to strike Massachusetts tomorrow at 0800. Haven’t heard of it? Well there’s not really a hurricane, but the teams are very busy. Tomorrow (June 8th) Operation Swift Response begins.
What is Operation Swift Response? It is a full scale exercise being conducted over two days to test regional technical rescue team’s interoperability during a statewide natural disaster in conjunction with air and ground assets from the Massachusetts National Guard. The disaster has created two areas of devastation, one on the Northshore and one on the Southshore.
The area of simulated devastation in the Northshore will be at Bradley Palmer State Park. This is where the Essex County Tech Rescue Team, District 14 Technical Rescue Team, Massachusetts National Guard TF CBRN and Army Aviation have been deployed for search and rescue operations. Members of the teams will be transported by the National Guard Aviation Unit from a rally point (Lawrence Airport) due to “impassable†roads from the disaster.
Once at the site Squads will be given missions to search areas of the park or “neighborhoods†for victims. Squads will navigate to their assigned area of operation and walk the trails or “Streets†searching simulated structures for trapped victims. Victims will be extricated from various environments and evacuated to the triage area, then taken by Massachusetts National Guard Medevac units to a simulated Hospital site at the Lawrence Airport
The objectives of the exercise are:
1- Deploy to and operate at a large scale search and rescue incident for 2 twelve hour operational periods (3rd period to be simulated).
2- Demonstrate interoperability between all district rescue teams and National Guard assets while operating in the disaster environment.
3- Demonstrate communication interoperability among all agencies using federal interoperability channels and cross band patching.