The Ultimate Rubble Pile?

For those of you who didn’t pick up this August’s edition of Popular Science you missed a really great article on TEEX’s Disaster City.  Written by a New York City reporter/novelist, Lisa Taddeo, the writer takes us through a full scale exercise put on by Texas Task Force 1. Taddeo watches as a Searchcam 2000 is inserted into a car dangling in mid-air searching for victims trapped inside. She also sees the Delsar LifeDetector seismic listening device being used to locate trapped victims. All in a days work for our equipment.

According to Brian Smith, public information officer for Texas Task Force 1, this extensive training exercise takes place once a year and involved over 150 people. Disaster city, which is spread out over 52 acres and cost $100 million to construct, hosts training classes not only for Texas Task Force 1, but for other government agencies like the  Military’s WMD-CST (Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Training), Federal Response Agencies – DMAT and ORE. Their instructors are full time responders located all over the United States — these guys eat, breathe and sleep technical search and rescue. 

The facility has 35 full time employs and Texas Task Force 1 has over 520 members. If Disaster City is any indication, Texas is ready for just about any type of disaster — earthquake, cyclones, hurricanes and rail to name a few. 

Technical Search & Rescue Trailer Coming Soon
It’s not everyday our products —the Searchcam 2000 and Delsar Life Detector, are featured in a national magazine (see the Searchcam in use on page 49).  The reality is, our gear is being used in Technical Search and Rescue training exercises on a daily basis.  If you have a training exercise coming up and require additional gear, click here for more details.

TEEX will be holding their next Disaster Technical Search Specialist Class starting October 12 – 16th.