Scenario: Protecting Long Islanders after Category 4 hurricane hits
First responders with New York City's elite search and rescue team, Task Force One, take to an inflatable dingy Thursday at Robert Moses State Park during drills to prepare for a category 4 hurricane. Credit: Elizabeth Sagarin
The scenario was imagined but plausible: A category 4 hurricane has devastated Fire Island. New York City's elite search and rescue team, Task Force One, has been activated.
The roads have washed away, so rescuers deploy on small inflatable boats. They don’t know what they will find but early reports are bad. People are stranded, possibly trapped in collapsed buildings, missing or injured.
Those were the prompts for a massive drill Thursday at Robert Moses State Park and the beach communities of Kismet and Saltaire. The players included 45 task force members drawn from the FDNY’s Special Operations Command, the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit and Emergency Medical Services. Fanning out, they encountered actors with simulated injuries and controllers delivering in-person and radio "injects" to prompt decisions and actions from the players.
Suffolk County's Office of Emergency Management was scheduled to take over the exercise Friday and Saturday.
It was no accident organizers chose Fire Island.
"Thirteen years ago, Sandy hit this island here and it almost got cut off," FDNY rescue Battalion Chief Joseph Downey Jr., a task force leader from West Islip, told reporters. "There was five 5 feet of water on the island. There were some residents who were trapped ... We’re bringing the task force out here to be prepared if some incident does happen."
New York’s task force is one of 28 in the nation that operate under Federal Emergency Management Agency authority with a combined budget of about $38 million, Downey said in an interview. It first deployed 30 years ago to the Oklahoma City bombing. Since then it has deployed to earthquakes, building collapses, tornadoes, floods, mudslides and hurricanes. It may deploy more, officials said at the briefing, as extreme weather events grow more frequent and intense.
Fifty-one task force members of about 200 — including Downey’s father, FDNY Chief Ray Downey — were killed on 9/11. The task force has since been rebuilt, Downey said. Members now come to the team specialized in areas like GPS technology and engineering. Some of their newest technology includes Starlink satellite terminals and SARCOP, an operating platform that lets rescuers share information in real-time — for example, by highlighting areas that have been searched so they don’t duplicate their efforts.
Early in Thursday’s exercise, one of the actors, Carla Pennolino, sat on the Kismet Fire Department steps, makeup giving him her the appearance of a victim with a broken arm and bleeding cuts. Pennolino said she was a logistics specialist with the city’s emergency management office, not a professional actor.
Her performance was blunt but effective: "Help!" she screamed as rescue medic Monica Lewis approached, adding, perhaps unnecessarily, but adding to the realism: "I’m bleeding."
Lewis worked fast, applying a bandage to Pennolino’s arm and questioning her as she worked: Do you have any medical issues like asthma? Can you walk? Do you know what day it is? Do you have companions in the area?
"You put all this on paper, people say ‘That’ll never happen.’ It has happened," said Dominic Bertucci, a FDNY captain and former Kismet fire chief who managed planning for the exercise. "People have short memories. They forget how severe" storms can be, and how dire the impact, he said.
Bertucci recalled performing several last-minute evacuations on Fire Island before Sandy hit. People who left later told him they wished they’d ridden out the storm in their homes. People who stayed told him it was a mistake they never wanted to repeat.
At a Saltaire location, the controllers simulated a leak of poisonous chlorine gas. It got worse when Bertucci called the operations base: reports of civilians trapped under a trash bin — jarred loose when the ocean crested the dunes — and a resident’s family member not seen since the wash over. Bring K-9 to search, the report adds.
Ten minutes later the K-9 unit arrived: Tombo, a five 5-year-old Belgian M malinois and his handler, NYPD Det. Monika Grejniec.
The trapped civilians were played by mannequins. An actual human hand, part of a donated body, stood in for the missing person, Bertucci said.
Reporters could not see the remains, located near a pile of debris not far from the dunes. But Tombo, working on a long leash, paced the area and started to bark.
"He’s indicating," Gregniec said. "We’ll have rescue come in."
The scenario was imagined but plausible: A category 4 hurricane has devastated Fire Island. New York City's elite search and rescue team, Task Force One, has been activated.
The roads have washed away, so rescuers deploy on small inflatable boats. They don’t know what they will find but early reports are bad. People are stranded, possibly trapped in collapsed buildings, missing or injured.
Those were the prompts for a massive drill Thursday at Robert Moses State Park and the beach communities of Kismet and Saltaire. The players included 45 task force members drawn from the FDNY’s Special Operations Command, the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit and Emergency Medical Services. Fanning out, they encountered actors with simulated injuries and controllers delivering in-person and radio "injects" to prompt decisions and actions from the players.
Memories of Sandy
Suffolk County's Office of Emergency Management was scheduled to take over the exercise Friday and Saturday.
It was no accident organizers chose Fire Island.
"Thirteen years ago, Sandy hit this island here and it almost got cut off," FDNY rescue Battalion Chief Joseph Downey Jr., a task force leader from West Islip, told reporters. "There was five 5 feet of water on the island. There were some residents who were trapped ... We’re bringing the task force out here to be prepared if some incident does happen."
New York’s task force is one of 28 in the nation that operate under Federal Emergency Management Agency authority with a combined budget of about $38 million, Downey said in an interview. It first deployed 30 years ago to the Oklahoma City bombing. Since then it has deployed to earthquakes, building collapses, tornadoes, floods, mudslides and hurricanes. It may deploy more, officials said at the briefing, as extreme weather events grow more frequent and intense.
Fifty-one task force members of about 200 — including Downey’s father, FDNY Chief Ray Downey — were killed on 9/11. The task force has since been rebuilt, Downey said. Members now come to the team specialized in areas like GPS technology and engineering. Some of their newest technology includes Starlink satellite terminals and SARCOP, an operating platform that lets rescuers share information in real-time — for example, by highlighting areas that have been searched so they don’t duplicate their efforts.
Early in Thursday’s exercise, one of the actors, Carla Pennolino, sat on the Kismet Fire Department steps, makeup giving him her the appearance of a victim with a broken arm and bleeding cuts. Pennolino said she was a logistics specialist with the city’s emergency management office, not a professional actor.
Faux victims
Her performance was blunt but effective: "Help!" she screamed as rescue medic Monica Lewis approached, adding, perhaps unnecessarily, but adding to the realism: "I’m bleeding."
Carla Pennolino, a logistics specialist in New York City's emergency management office, gets treated for a faux wound on the steps of the Kismet Fire Department. Credit: Elizabeth Sagarin
Lewis worked fast, applying a bandage to Pennolino’s arm and questioning her as she worked: Do you have any medical issues like asthma? Can you walk? Do you know what day it is? Do you have companions in the area?
"You put all this on paper, people say ‘That’ll never happen.’ It has happened," said Dominic Bertucci, a FDNY captain and former Kismet fire chief who managed planning for the exercise. "People have short memories. They forget how severe" storms can be, and how dire the impact, he said.
Bertucci recalled performing several last-minute evacuations on Fire Island before Sandy hit. People who left later told him they wished they’d ridden out the storm in their homes. People who stayed told him it was a mistake they never wanted to repeat.
At a Saltaire location, the controllers simulated a leak of poisonous chlorine gas. It got worse when Bertucci called the operations base: reports of civilians trapped under a trash bin — jarred loose when the ocean crested the dunes — and a resident’s family member not seen since the wash over. Bring K-9 to search, the report adds.
Ten minutes later the K-9 unit arrived: Tombo, a five 5-year-old Belgian M malinois and his handler, NYPD Det. Monika Grejniec.
The trapped civilians were played by mannequins. An actual human hand, part of a donated body, stood in for the missing person, Bertucci said.
Reporters could not see the remains, located near a pile of debris not far from the dunes. But Tombo, working on a long leash, paced the area and started to bark.
"He’s indicating," Gregniec said. "We’ll have rescue come in."
SARRA SOUNDS OFF: The shortage of game officials on LI On the latest episode of "Sarra Sounds Off," Newsday's Gregg Sarra talks to young people who are turning to game officiating as a new career path.
SARRA SOUNDS OFF: The shortage of game officials on LI On the latest episode of "Sarra Sounds Off," Newsday's Gregg Sarra talks to young people who are turning to game officiating as a new career path.
