What If Disaster Strikes?

Several dozen bodies are strewn across a dark, damp underground subway station, crushed beneath crumpled cars and slabs of concrete. Car alarms are blaring and natural gas is seeping into the gritty air. Minutes ago, a gas line exploded, causing a parking garage to collapse into the fictional Orange Street station – a nightmarish scene fit for a movie.

This is the kind of emergency response situation New Jersey's Metro Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Strike Team is prepared to handle. The team, made up of members from about 10 fire departments spanning six counties and two cities, spent four days recently training at the Orange Street fire academy in Newark at a simulated emergency disaster scenario.

"No one department can handle a collapse like this," said Richard Zieser, deputy chief of Newark fire department's special operations division.

For the past four years, the academy has hosted man-made simulations to train the Strike Team, created after the 9/11 attacks to respond to large-scale emergency situations.

This year was no different. Fire officials modified an old city bus to resemble a subway car that teams sliced open each day, and the fake station was even adorned with mock-up "Wanted" advertisements.  Each year, it takes several Newark and other area fire officials months to design new scenarios, which are then built to look as realistic as possible.

"It was very precise down to every detail," said Scott Latona,  Millburn's batallion chief for special operations, who helped plan the event. "We used old cars, buses, rail cars, batteries, hose dummies -- short of having live victims, it was realistic as you're probably ever going to get."

According to Livingston Fire Chief Christopher Mullin, “Though this drill was designed to train and educate members of the U.A.S.I. Team in tactic and procedures, it allowed for all Essex County Fire Chief’s to see first-hand how the team responds to major emergencies and all of the ‘specialized equipment’ available to the Fire Chief’s in their communities should a major incident take place.”

Firefighters got their hands dirty with a circuit of posts, which involved cutting through air shafts and reinforcing trenches with struts to retrieve trapped victims. After each day, the stations are reverted for the next shift.

"It's only going to help us down the road," Latona of Millburn said. "The training is not limited to terrorist attacks. We could have this kind of situation with a gas explosion or a number of scenarios."