Bill would create top-tier urban search and rescue team in western Pennsylvania
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Two lawmakers are saying the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse in Frick Park in January reaffirmed why western Pennsylvania needs a top-tier urban search and rescue team. Thursday, they introduced legislation with the goal of making that happen.
Pittsburgh's assistant fire chief says they called in the state's only urban search and rescue team to help with search efforts when the Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed in Frick Park in January. However, since it's based in Philadelphia, he says his team had to wait hours for them to get there. That's why he says passing this legislation is so important in case a disaster happens again.
It's hard to forget the images of the bridge collapse: a Port Authority bus dangling over the edge with passengers on board and vehicles in the ravine below. No one died, but 10 people were hurt.
Brian Kokkila is Pittsburgh's assistant fire chief and the task force leader for Western Pennsylvania's Urban Search and Rescue Strike Team 1. He says his team had to call in the Urban Search and Rescue Team Task Force 1 from Philadelphia to help.
"We utilized K-9 resources to validate that there was no one trapped underneath the collapsed bridge structure," said Kokkila.
Thankfully, Kokkila says no one was trapped under the bridge, so having a type 1 urban search and rescue team in western Pennsylvania wouldn't have made a difference in this case, but he says it would have made a huge difference when part of a building collapsed in the city of Washington in July of 2017, trapping a woman for hours.
"We would've been able to search and clear the building so much faster if we had the K-9 resources to do that rapid search," said Kokkila.
Kokkila says the urban search team in western Pennsylvania now is a type 4 team, a lower-level team that can help in disasters but doesn't have everything it needs like trained K-9 search teams, some equipment and funding to sustain a top-tier program like the one in Philadelphia. The legislation introduced Thursday by state representatives Natalie Mihalek and Dan Miller would make that happen here. Miller says it would cost the state $19 million to balance out capabilities from east to west.
"This is why we are talking about it now. The budget discussions are going on, the leaders are talking, the governor is involved and we want to be sure this item is part of that discussion," said State Rep. Dan Miller, D- Allegheny.
Mihalek and Miller say the bill already has a number of co-sponsors. The next step would be getting it up for a committee vote in a few months. Lawmakers say it would ultimately take a few years for the team to be formed, which Kokkila says would essentially be molded into the strike team that's already in place here.
