07 October 2009

U.S. Trains Foreign Firefighters in Search and Rescue

Audio of Rex Strickland of Fairfax County, Virginia, Fire Department

The first speaker is Phil Kurata of America.gov introducing Rex Strickland, a member of the Fairfax County Fire Department in Virginia and a specialist in urban search and rescue. Strickland speaks about teaching urban search and rescue skills around the world.

(begin transcript)

Phil Kurata: This is Phil Kurata of America.gov. I spoke with Rex Strickland of the Fairfax, Virginia, Fire Department about his department’s work in teaching urban search and rescue skills around the world. Here’s what he had to say.

Rex Strickland: Initially, with USAID, it’s about kinda expanding the response. We started many years ago, in 1988, with the response into Russia — Armenia. So for the longest time, two out of the 29 urban search and rescue teams inside the United States — there was two teams, us and Miami, which then changed I think in 2005 to L.A. [Los Angeles] County and us. Respond internationally to events all over the world. So we kinda, I think, internationally kinda started that response system, and throughout the years it’s expanded to each nation kinda seeing the need and the benefit of having an urban search and rescue program. So, just like a fire house in a jurisdiction, the more you have the less time it takes to respond. So it really cuts down on the reflex time so all throughout Europe and South America and now South Africa, it’s lessened the need of a U.S.-based response. So having South Africa, for example, be able to respond to their own events obviously helps them. Now that doesn’t say that we won’t go in there if they need — if the event is large enough, you know. We’ll still respond, but it allows them to handle their own small-to-medium events, and it just benefits entire regions.

(end transcript)