By Cash Matlock
Queen City Newsfeed
MERIDIAN – The Meridian Public Safety Training Facility is hosting a Heavy Equipment and Rigging Specialist (HERS) course this week designed to provide Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Task Force Personnel with the knowledge and skills needed in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist threat.
24 participants were selected from across the state to participate in this week’s training course— most of the class is made up of local firemen and law enforcement officers.
“These individuals were hand selected because they are probably 24 of best of the best in the state of Mississippi when it comes to urban search and rescue,” said Meridian Public Safety Director Doug Stephens.
“This is where we train guys how to lift large piles of building debris off of people in order to keep them alive while we do that,” said Richard Alfes.
Alfes is a Rescue Specialist from the Massachusetts FEMA team.
He’s been on the ground after several catastrophic events like the bombing at the 1996 Olympic Games, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11.
He said it’s crucial for first responders to have this type of training.
“Many people don’t understand the need for this training. They think it’s too costly. It’s normally too costly to an individual until one of their loved ones is trapped in a building collapse, then money is no object,” said Alfes.
Three cranes are on-site this week, each one of them costs over $1,000 a day to operate— a necessary cost Alfes said.
“In order to train the people to do the job properly, they have to physically do it. you can’t do it on a chalk board, you can’t do it sitting in a class room. You have to get out here and do it. See it, and then that way they will understand it,” said Alfes.
“The class is 100% funded through the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security and our training dollars that we receive from them annually,” said Stephens.
Participants are learning things like how to cut steel I-Beams or support structures and how to lift heavy structures.
“We may have victims under those piles of debris, and we have to calculate weights and move those debris pieces very carefully as to not do more harm, so my job here is to learn as much as possible about using the correct crane, calculating weights and guiding my guys to make a good decision as to not harm anyone that’s already in a rubble pile,” said Jeff Franks.
Franks is a local firefighter in Philadelphia, Mississippi, as well as a Mississippi USAR Task Force Leader. He said this type of specialty training may be more necessary than people think.
“We do not get structure collapses very often, but we have a major fault line up in the north part of the state, we’re very prone to hurricanes and tornadoes, so for instance, last year with Rolling Fork, we had a catastrophic tornado hit the Delta area, and there was a lot of debris, so this goes unnoticed a lot of times in our rescue work. There’s a lot of times that we have to move large pieces of rubble with victims trapped underneath, and we only have one shot at doing that,” said Franks.
“If there’s local responders around here that are paid municipal firemen or law enforcement officers that are interested in being a part of the state search and rescue team, they just reach out to me here at our office at 601-484-6890, and I’ll put them in touch with the proper people to talk about that,” said Stephens.
