How the Coast Guard trains for catastrophic incidents

Catastrophic Incident Search and Rescue, or better known as CISAR, is a large-scale event where hundreds of people need to be rescued at once and it involves local federal agencies. Training for CISAR is important because unlike Maritime Search and Rescue, which is what we're used to conducting, this involves multiple partner agencies that work within the incident command system. So it's best for us to train prior to a hurricane or flood response so that we can learn how to integrate into the system. Maybe we don't have a huge hurricane that happens every single year that we're sending flood response teams to, but when it does happen, it's an absolutely dire situation. We have to be ready to answer that call. The specific reason for training for flood response is to make sure that our boat crews know how to conduct themselves in an urban flooded environment prior to actually having to go out there. Everything we've learned here at this training center is extremely vital to our mission and ensuring that we're able to save people while we're out there showing up to hurricanes or flood response. We're able to get to people safely so that we don't endanger the crew members trying to save the victims as well. Early on in my career, I was able to experience the flood response program. It wasn't what we have today. I remember responding during Hurricane Florence and just being worried about, you know, is the PPE, the personal protective equipment that I'm using, actually keeping me safe? Today it's an official program of record. Now the lightweight dry suits that we use that will protect you from hazardous materials, it's just a complete turnaround. So my expectations coming here, they were not met. It was actually far superior. It's one of the craziest sites I've ever been at. You know, like the training is different compared to any other training I've been to because of like the real life scenarios, how much attention and detail they put into this school. It really helps with everything to bring everything full scale. We were fortunate enough to find a training center in Estatotuck, Indiana, where it has the scenarios already where you have a flooded village, where you have flooded buildings, and it's important to learn how to access those buildings and the training environment prior to having to go out there and do it. They flood these villages. We've got a reservoir. We've got a river that we work in. We're cutting holes in cars. We're cutting into houses, breaking into roofs. It really is like being in a flooded town. We can get in here and work through scenarios in a controlled environment and really get to learn and experience some things that we're going to see outside of here in the field. It might seem like a lot when you're going through training here, but it's good that you get exposure to it because then you're trained and ready for the worst case scenario. Some of the changes that have happened is just the standardization of gear. Now there's a standard trailer with a standard outfit list. The assets themselves, we went from metal john boats to now the standard 15-foot inflatable asset that we use, and then I really come a long way. So we're excited because moving forward, we're going to have dedicated teams for this mission that will train and actually respond together, that will be at the ready when the call comes.