Tulsa Fire Crews Practice Building Collapse Rescues

Friday, June 23rd 2006, 5:52 am

By: News On 6

Tulsa Fire crews tore down a TU apartment building to train for disaster. The apartment building near 10th and College was scheduled to be bulldozed, so "Oklahoma Task Force One" used it for rescue training.

A company from Florida came to supervise the exercise. Only a few of these rescuers have ever worked on a real building collapse. So exercises like this help them to find the balance between speed and safety.

Tulsa Fire Departmentâ€™s Nick Swainston: "You balance it by training, and you know sometimes what you can and cannot do during training and that's the time to make the mistakes if we're going to make them. And here we watch them like a hawk."

Rescue Training Company president Tom Holgerson: "When we leave, they're the experts, and we want to make sure they know what they're doing."

"Oklahoma Task Force One" deploys in February to respond to disasters statewide.