Temblor Teamwork : Rescue Crews From Across County Practice Quake Response

As the dust settled, Point Mugu firefighter Harry Kengen lay sprawled on his back in a dark tunnel, half-buried beneath a pile of chipped concrete blocks.

“I was just waiting to be discovered,” he said, brushing himself off after being dug out. “The dogs finally found me.”

It wasn’t an emergency situation Thursday. But for the 50 or more firefighters from throughout Ventura County, it might as well have been.

Dozens of search-and-rescue workers used a simulated earthquake to brush up on training, break in equipment provided by the federal government and learn how to work together.

“We’re finding out it’s going to take more than one agency to do the job,” Point Mugu firefighter Derek Harper said. “If we ever have another earthquake in the county, we’ll have to put this training to use.”

Inside a Point Mugu building scheduled to be demolished this year, search-and-rescue workers constructed a disaster scene that included collapsed walls, buried victims and dense thickets of concrete and wood.

Emergency crews used electronic listening devices, trained dogs and hand-held cameras to seek out victims, then practiced rescuing them from beneath piles of wood- and concrete-laced rubble.

“This is built to simulate how an apartment building would collapse,” Ventura County Fire Capt. Gary Smith said of the earthquake training scene, which took weeks to construct. “You have to tunnel vertically to find your victims.”

Although such devastation was not abundant in Ventura County after the Jan. 17 Northridge quake, emergency officials learned a valuable lesson: They need training to save people like the residents of the Northridge Meadows apartment building, where 16 people were crushed to death when the first floor of the three-story complex collapsed.

“The disaster-management community has been telling us for years that old brick and masonry buildings are one of our big hazards for loss of life,” said Gordon Hildreth, an emergency coordinator for Ventura County’s team, a group of volunteers that more often responds to reports of lost or injured hikers than of earthquake victims.

The daylong training session Thursday, which included response crews from Ventura, Oxnard, Point Mugu, Camarillo State Hospital and Ventura County, also gave firefighters a chance to put to work a series of tools provided to the county by the federal government as surplus.

The package includes a mobile compressor, air chisels, drills and hoses.

“I would want this stuff at my house if there was an emergency,” said Sandi Wells, the Ventura County Fire Department spokeswoman.

Engineer George Taylor of the Ventura Fire Department said the training effort would help the various departments better coordinate their response in the event of a major disaster.

“We hope we never have to use it, but that’s why we’re working with the other agencies,” Taylor said. “The biggest thing is it’s a logistical nightmare.”

Also on hand Thursday were three dogs trained to sniff out humans buried deep beneath piles of rubble.

Casey, an Airedale terrier that had been put to work at the Northridge Meadows complex on Jan. 17, helped locate Kengen after a half-hour wait in the rubble.

“These dogs have real good noses on them,” said Dan Lindsay, a captain with the Ontario Airport Fire Department who manages a trained-dog program. “They’re real good workers.”