As part of a newly formed rescue task force, members of the Oklahoma Army National Guard participated in a water rescue training exercise on April 5 over the Oklahoma River in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma Task Force One is comprised of members of the Tulsa, Verdigris, Norman and Oklahoma City Fire Departments, along with members of the Oklahoma Army National Guard. Task Force One firefighters are certified rescue divers and paramedics who filled the roles of both the flood victims and rescue swimmers during the exercise.
Oklahoma Army National Guard helicopters and Soldiers from Army Aviation Support Facility (AASF) 1, in Tulsa, and AASF 2, in Lexington, Oklahoma, spent most of the day hovering over the Riversport complex, hoisting rescue divers from the water.
Task Force One, which officially began operations in October 2017, specializes in rescuing civilians from deadly situations, which include open and rapid water, lost hiker, collapsed trench, rooftop and post-natural disaster rescues, among others.
“[We] are deployable during State/local emergencies and regional to national emergencies similar to what [is] seen during our flood season in the spring, [and periods of] heavy storm impact, even up to the hurricanes that we’ve seen as recent as last year in Texas,” said Lt. Josh Pearcy, lead rescue swimmer for the Oklahoma City Fire Department.
Together, the firefighters and National Guard aviators comprise what is known as an HSRT, or Helicopter Search and Rescue Team, which is overseen, funded and dispatched by the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.
For this exercise, the Oklahoma Army National Guard used two UH-60 Black Hawk and two UH-72 Lakota helicopters. The aircrews, along with rescue divers, practiced open water rescue techniques utilizing both strop harnesses and rescue baskets.
Each rescue diver had the opportunity to play both the rescuer and the rescued. Divers rotated between each of the helicopters using both the harnesses and baskets.
BY MAJ Geoff Legler, Oklahoma NATIONAL GUARD
