Title: Miami-Dade Response to Apartment Building Collapse in Barbados
1Miami-Dade Response to Apartment Building
Collapse in Barbados
2- From Alan Perry, Program Manager, FL-TF1
- On Sunday at approximately 1200hrs I received a
phone call from Chief Lorenzo. He had received a
call from the Barbados government advising of a
partial collapse of a 2 story building into a
cave. The Barbados government was asking for
assistance in locating the missing occupants
using our Fire Department's USR team. Chief
Lorenzo went on to advise me that the County had
approved their request for aid and what could we
do to get help to them A.S.A.P. - I advised Chief Lorenzo that we could try to put
together a recon/search team with minimal
equipment, at which time he stated he was
en-route to HQ to help make this happen. I
proceeded to HQ and started to call in personnel
to help with all the necessary behind the scenes
issues. The first critical issue of
transportation was accomplished in short order. - Chief Lorenzo made a few phone calls where he
secured an aircraft at MIA that was scheduled to
depart at 1600 hrs. That gave us 3 hrs to obtain
a small recon/search team with passports,
identify what equipment we would need and move it
from Homestead to our POD. Once that was
accomplished we needed to drive to MIA, load
everything and be ready for wheels up. - Our plan was to get 12-15 TF members out the door
to identify if we were dealing with a rescue or
recovery. The second part of the plan was to
activate a 70 person team if we had any sign that
we were still in rescue mode. Unfortunately,
after we used our Live find Canine Teams who did
not alert, our listening devices and our search
camera that were negative, our Cadaver Canine
Team that alerted us in 3 areas, we realized the
probability of a live rescue was fading. During
the next 24 hours, we helped the local government
organizations with technical advice as they
switched from a rescue mode to more likely a
recovery one. - All 5 of the missing were located and removed.
Mr. Lorde, OFDA-LAC coordinator, - stated that all were located exactly where our
"sniffer dogs" indicated.
3From Mike Marks The search area was very steep
and the rubble was very loose. The canines had
to be confident and independent. The handlers
had to be able to direct their dogs away from
danger as well as into areas that needed to be
searched. Pictures from a rescuer's point of
view Two out of three apartments fell into a
cave that was approximately 50-70 feet deep. The
walls of the cave were very unstable with the
possibility of further collapse. We documented
movement of cracks that started off as only a few
inches across that grew to well over 1-2 feet.
4- Team at airport waiting to board aircraft
5- View of collapse from street
6- Yes it was a cave not a sinkhole
7- This fissure started out as 2 inches. Now it is
over 2 feet
8- Same fissure as previous slide but from a
different angle
9- Basket with searcher ready to be lowered into
search area
10- K-9 Specialist Hilda Wood and Flash working to
find live victims
11- Basket being lowered into search area
12- Tech Search crew out to look for voids. Basket is
only safe haven
13- Tech Search with camera inspecting voids
14- Tech Search with camera inspecting voids
15- Human Remains K-9 Spirit working search area
16- 3 areas that Spirit had alerts. All victims were
located here.
17- Problem, very big and deadly problem. This
eventually collapsed as our Structural Specialist
predicted. All rescue and recovery efforts had
stopped well before this as there was way too
much shifting in the rock formations.
18I have gone on over a dozen deployments traveling
around the world and this was the most
challenging deployment thus far. It really
proves that you need to train like it is the real
thing every time. You never know when the real
one will come. From walking out the door to go
to Home Depot on a Sunday afternoon to driving to
MIA to get on a plane heading to Barbados 4 hours
later. You never know. We all have the Big One
right here in our backyards. We should all keep
one eye on the Tropics but also the other eye on
the Ball. Hurricanes come with plenty of
warning, the rest will put you to the
test.--Alan Perry