Facility near Salina is used to train medical teams for disaster situations
Search and rescue crews from across the state and the U.S. participated in training at Crisis City last week, culminating in a simulated rescue operation Friday evening.
Twenty-three paramedics and physicians, all part of urban search and rescue forces in Kansas and across the country, completed three days of classes and simulations in Crisis City as part of Disaster Medical Solutions’ (DMS) Medical Team Specialist course.
Juan Henriquez, one of the instructors at DMS, said he and all the other instructors have extensive search and rescue experience in real-world disasters, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Ground Zero of the World Trade Center after 9/11, and more recently situations like the 2021 Champlain Towers South condominium collapse in Florida.
“It’s about passing on the lessons learned to the next generation so we can save more lives,” Henriquez said.
Instructor Troy Bonfield, a member of the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s Ohio Task Force No. 1, said the instructors have diverse backgrounds and come from many different parts of the United States.
“All of the instructors bring unique perspectives and experiences from different regions of the United States,” Bonfield said. “We continually leverage these experiences to provide the most interactive and realistic scenarios possible. I believe this is what sets our program apart from others.”
Why train for search and rescue in Salina, Kansas?
Crisis City – located within the Smoky Hill Air National Guard Range southwest of Salina – provides a perfect location for this type of training.
The site also includes the scene of the collapsed building where the last natural gas explosion scenario occurred.
Most of the students came from the state of Kansas and were traveling on behalf of these organizations; one even came from the West Coast.
Reno Blanchfield, a member of the San Francisco Fire Department for 17 years, said he came to this DMS training on his own initiative after hearing about the high quality of the training.
“Some senior staff at my fire department said this is what I should do,” Blanchfield said. “They said it was one of the hardest courses and one of the best for my current level of experience.”
He has already completed other training courses, such as pediatrics and advanced cardiovascular life support, and said the course met the expectations of his colleagues and motivated him to learn more.
“It’s a little uncomfortable,” he said. “I’ve done a lot and seen a lot of training. Now I come here and think, this is different, I don’t really know what to do and I have to figure it out.”
Krista Alanis, a Kansas Task Force No. 7 paramedic from Goodland, said she is excited to take what she learned from this training back to northwest Kansas.
“This is a huge advantage, especially in rural Kansas,” Alanis said.
When she learned of the latter scenario, Alanis said, she was horrified but felt that her fear would serve her well.
“You just don’t know the unknowns, but it’s good to train that way,” she said. “It’s always something different, but it still comes down to the basics.”
Students find and “rescue” 24 volunteers from piles of rubble
After being briefed on the scenario, the students headed to the pile shortly after 6 p.m. on Friday, where 24 volunteers posed as victims with a variety of injuries and ailments, from burns and broken bones to respiratory problems such as asthma.
The students were divided into three teams, with each team taking on a portion of the pile and working to triage, treat and rescue the victims.
One of those volunteers was Alyssa Sanchez, Saline County’s deputy emergency management director. She was tasked with tending to very minor injuries and distracting rescue teams while they worked deeper into the pile.
“It’s interesting to see,” Sanchez said. “Every team is doing different things and approaching the situation in different ways.”
The scenario was not completed until all the victims were rescued from the pile, a task that took more than three hours.
Kansas State Fire Commissioner speaks about the importance of this training
Observers of the training and final scenario included Mark Engholm, Kansas State Fire Marshal, whose office was responsible for implementing DMS in Crisis City.
He said his office has two main responsibilities in emergency response in the state: dealing with hazardous materials and search and rescue.
“I know more about hazardous materials, so it will be interesting to see how this works,” he said.
Engholm said it is important for the state of Kansas to have a facility like Crisis City to train professionals in the emergency and response field. He said he is pleased that DMS is here to provide this training.
“Where else could you put people in these conditions and then test how to do it?” he said. “That’s how you learn.”
Engholm hasn’t even been a marshal for a year, but he hopes to use Crisis City for more of these types of exercises in the near future. For example, he’s planning a building collapse course that will teach responders how to rescue victims in crisis scenarios.
