Emergency response crews in the Bay Area are paying close attention to the search and rescue underway in Florida following the tragic collapse of a 12-story condo near Miami.
Bay Area personnel are monitoring needs such as staffing and equipment during Florida’s emergency response as they hope to learn key preparedness lessons.
San Francisco has two heavy rescue squads which are fully staffed 24 hours a day with the threat of a large-scale earthquake always looming over the region.
“(The squads) have the ability to respond to what we call trench rescue, so if you have a trench and it collapses we can go into the trench, we can go into confined space,” San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Jonathan Baxter said. “So looking at Miami Dade we have a combination of trench rescue and confined space rescue.”
An imaginary line divides San Francisco’s emergency responsibilities in two halves. Fire Station 1 in the downtown corridor is responsible for the northside of the city to the Sunset, while Fire Station 7 in the mission district is responsible for the southside to the coast.
“Are we prepared for something like (what happened in Florida)? We can’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ because we never know what that disaster is going to bring. It’s all going to be how prepared can we be for that,” Baxter said.
That’s encompassed by training, education and community preparedness, as Baxter said all Bay Area residents should have a plan if their building collapses which is most likely to occur in the region during an earthquake.
