2011-05-09T16:01:08-04:00 Zend_Feed_Writer https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com

2011-02-22T00:00:00-05:00 2011-05-09T16:01:08-04:00 https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com/news/detail/id/8 FORT PIERCE – Recognizing the need for skilled individuals in disaster relief, urban search and recovery and emergency management, eight members of the Haitian Ministry of Youth, Sports and Civic Action are completing a 15-day training program at Indian River State College’s Treasure Coast Public Safety Training Complex. Through intensive, hands-on, train-the-trainer exercises in light search and rescue, disaster medical operations, fire safety and suppression, incident command and emergency preparedness and planning, these eight individuals will return to Haiti and train up to 60 young people in these same skills. These efforts are part of a year-long training plan with the Ministry and IRSC and will include three more eight-member teams with the potential for additional intermediate and advanced technical training in the future. It is expected that these four teams will train up to 1,000 individuals in Haiti’s equivalent to U.S. counties and states. The Ministry of Youth, Sports and Civic Action is tasked to train the youth of Haiti on important vocational skills. Since the earthquake of 2009, the Ministry conducts disaster response and emergency preparedness training in Haiti. The training is paid for exclusively by the government of Haiti. "Training partnerships such as this provide much more than traditional learning opportunities,” said Stephen C. Huntsberger, Dean of Public Service Education at IRSC. "In addition to cultural interactions and shared educational experiences, our local economy is positively impacted by training that brings in participants from outside our area who visit area businesses and utilize local goods and services.” The IRSC Treasure Coast Public Safety Training Complex is a 50-acre living laboratory featuring highly-sophisticated and state-of-the-art facilities and resources used daily by public safety students and local, state and federal agencies. The Complex is home to the Employ Florida Banner Center for Homeland Security and Defense and is charged with providing education, training and information for Florida’s workforce on homeland security, emergency response and counter terrorism. For more information on this training occurring with Haitian government, contact Stephen Huntsberger at (772) 772-462-7950. ### 2010-06-09T00:00:00-04:00 2010-06-09T06:27:23-04:00 https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com/news/detail/id/7 Civil Support Teams (CST) help provide needed expertise and skills to keep citizens safe at high-profile public events and during emergencies that threaten the nation's security. June 7-11, The Indian River State College Public Safety Training Complex is hosting the Florida Army and Air National Guard as they conduct their final training to become the nation's newest CST. After they complete this training, the Secretary of the Defense will notify Congress that the Team is ready to accomplish their designated mission. Until recently, California was the only state to have two teams. Congress has established two additional CSTs, a second team for both Florida and New York. The training at IRSC will prepare the 48th CST as Florida's second team. The 48th CST will be training to identify, respond and contain suspected Weapons of Mass Destruction (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive weapons). During this training, the WMD-CST will participate in technical decontamination and team deployment. They will also conduct base-camp operations and medical support functions. The team will use specialized equipment including satellite, secure digital and voice communications to provide connectivity with civil and military forces from the incident site through the State to the National Command Authority during these exercises. 2010-04-29T00:00:00-04:00 2010-04-29T09:44:28-04:00 https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com/news/detail/id/6 FORT PIERCE, FL -- Indian River State College has been awarded a prestigious United States Institute of Peace (USIP) grant of $79,680 to expand the College's Center for Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Operations as a training model for educational institutions and aid organizations in the US and overseas. The IRSC program provides intensive field-based training in response to earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural and manmade disasters. Combining full-scale crisis simulations with a relevant academic foundation, the multi-faceted program is the first of its type in the nation. For the past five years IRSC and its partner colleges and universities have conducted intensive disaster simulations in Florida and in Macedonia in Southeastern Europe to hone the skills of future humanitarian operators who will work in insecure and challenging environments. Partners with IRSC include the United States Military Academy at West Point, The Citadel, Northwest Missouri State University, Northern Oklahoma College, Salve Regina University, the Center for Creative Leadership and the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Macedonia. The program partners have formed a Consortium for Humanitarian Service and Education that will participate in the grant-funded activities. The USIP grant will be used to bring together faculty, students, and leading subject matter experts from the United States, Macedonia, and the international community in a series of workshops and conferences over the next two years that will further develop this world-class program for training the next generation of disaster relief and humanitarian aid workers. Discussions will focus on the conduct of practical training for leading edge concerns in the aid community such as civil-military relations, safety and security, humanitarian negotiations, leadership and team building, aid delivery, contingency planning, and inter-agency management. IRSC will disseminate the training program curriculum to its national and international partners in the project. "We recognize that training for aid workers must combine solid academics with practical exercises so that our graduates understand how to ‘get it right' working with real people with real concerns under real conditions,” said Dr. Paul Forage, who directs the IRSC program. "To provide an additional layer of experience, we work in partnership with the organizations found in the real world of humanitarian work and disaster relief.” American students work side by side with their Macedonian counterparts to practice delivering humanitarian assistance safely and securely while coping with diverse social and political conditions during the crisis simulations. Two IRSC students who participated in the training last summer utilized their skills and experience to provide valuable leadership and assistance in Haiti following the earthquake. Other graduates have gone on to apply their skills in Africa, northern Iraq, and Afghanistan. The IRSC Center for Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Operations is based at the College's Treasure Coast Public Safety Training Complex in Fort Pierce, Florida, a fifty-acre living laboratory for criminal justice, fire science, emergency management, legal assisting and human services. The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress in 1984 to increase the nation's capacity to manage international conflict without violence. ### 2010-04-27T00:00:00-04:00 2010-04-27T11:59:29-04:00 https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com/news/detail/id/5 Indian River State College's Fire Academy and Training Center was named Florida Fire Training Center of the Year by Florida Chief Financial Officer and State Fire Marshall Alex Sink. Firefighters are the first responder to most emergency incidents, protecting life and property from the destruction of fires or meeting the medical needs of those involved in traffic accidents and other emergencies. At IRSC, Fire Science students choose from multiple programs to pursue their firefighting careers. Students receive a well-rounded associate's degree education through the Fire Science Academy Track that couples academics with a strong foundation in fire operations, including field training or they can choose to complete the Basic Fire Academy and receive certification as a fire combat firefighter. IRSC also offers specialized and advanced training for career firefighters.   View News Release... 2010-03-18T00:00:00-04:00 2010-03-19T15:18:56-04:00 https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com/news/detail/id/1 FORT PIERCE — Deputy Rusty Wright swam to the broken body of a submerged small plane on Thursday and watched his partner disappear inside it searching for the "black box” for information that might help them determine why the plane went down. Hovering outside the plane, Wright spoke but there was no answer. Suddenly, he realized the underwater wireless communication gear inside his helmet wasn’t working. In a flash, he realized a yellow rope connecting him to his partner could be severed by sharp metal swinging back and forth. He tugged the rope twice to tell his partner to reverse direction and return. The two men were part of the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office’s first Search and Rescue Team training exercise at a 40-foot-deep lake that is part of the Indian River State College Public Safety Training Complex. The plane sunk there is a Gulfstream jet once owned by famed boxing promoter Don King. "This is the first live training we’ve had at our lake,” said Steve Huntsberger, dean of Public Safety Education. Since the complex opened 15 months ago, about 10 state and national training sessions for various groups have taken place at the complex and six more are scheduled, he said. A firefighters’ association trained on burning buildings and a burning tank truck a few months ago. On Thursday, sheriff’s deputies had to locate a victim beneath the water, search for a black box (which is really orange with white stripes) and then search around the plane for anything that might help investigators. They brought the victim up first, and then went back down for the box. The four divers wore dry suits in the 55-degree lake water which provided some protection but didn’t exactly keep them toasty warm. "We trained in St. Petersburg recently and it was colder than this,” Wright said. "So we were doing OK today.” The tug system of communication also lets the team members who stand on shore "talk” to divers under the water. A single tug, for instance, asks the diver if all is well. A single tug back means everything is fine. Four tugs from the shore person to the diver tells the diver to stay right where he is because another diver is being sent down to him. Had the rope connecting the partners been cut by the sharp metal, Wright would have sent four tugs to the man on shore to ask for someone to come help him. "This is a good training place,” said Lt. Doug Hardie, who heads the team of deputies. "We’ll probably be training here once a month. Some of the things we can do here is to rescue our own personnel, search for evidence that may have been thrown into water, and train with teams from other counties to make sure we can work smoothly together.”   Courtesy of TCPalm - Susan Burgess   2010-03-18T00:00:00-04:00 2010-03-19T15:17:50-04:00 https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com/news/detail/id/2 FORT PIERCE — Florida governor and U.S. Senate candidate Charlie Crist toured the Treasure Coast Public Safety Training Complex at Indian River State College Thursday, shooting a tight pattern on its firing range and praising the school’s effort to train workers for tomorrow’s jobs. "I had no idea this college was offering the level of academic opportunities that they are,” Crist said after IRSC President Edwin Massey led the governor’s entourage through parts of the year-old, eight-building complex. It is used to train firefighters, paramedics, emergency managers, paralegals and law enforcement officers. The governor visited a room in which computer-generated scenarios train police to properly fire weapons. He watched as three studio walls surrounding law enforcement student Jesse Harris of Vero Beach came alive as a virtual biker bar in which a disgruntled patron drew a pistol. Crist also watched from above as members of a SWAT team entered a specially designed tactical training building, covering each other with drawn weapons firing blank cartridges. "I hear you have target practice here,” Crist mentioned to Massey, who took him to the school’s indoor firing range. There, high-liability instructor and range master Luis Gomez armed the governor with a Glock 9 mm semi-automatic pistol and stood him seven yards in front of a human profile target. The first 11 rounds Crist fired hit all over two targets. But then the governor removed a pair of shooting glasses Gomez had given him to wear and immediately grouped the last nine rounds in a tight pattern over a profile target’s torso. Massey said he hoped Crist’s visit would help remind the Legislature that Florida’s community colleges are a smart investment right now. "We have about 80,000 students who have come into the system during these hard economic times,” Massey said. "People are laid off and many of those jobs aren’t coming back. "They want access to retraining and can’t afford to go to school away from home,” he added. "We are hoping for the funding to provide them with that educational access.”   Courtesy of TCPalm - James Kirley   2010-03-18T00:00:00-04:00 2010-04-02T11:07:38-04:00 https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com/news/detail/id/3 FT. PIERCE, FL -- Members of the St. Lucie County Sheriff's office dive team hit the water Thursday. They headed for an airplane submerged in the middle of a lake. "You know when you go down you've got to orientate yourself to the darkness," said Deputy Rusty Wright. They were taking part in the first dive scenario at the new Treasure Coast Public Safety Training Complex on the campus of Indian River State College. "When we had sunk the fuselage into the lake, we had people calling in to 911 that there had been a plane crash," said Steve Huntsberger with IRSC. The set up allows trainees to go right from the classroom into actual training scenarios, and allows area dive teams to practice their craft. Lieutenant Doug Hardie said, "The more we can expose our dives to real life scenarios the better we can respond to a real life scenario." After studying the blueprint of the Gulf Stream in the water, the first divers took the plunge.  Over a two-way communication system, the divers said they were looking for a way into the plane.  A short time later, they returned with their first objective, a victim. A second dive team entered and emerged a few minutes later with the plane's black box recording device. "Getting in to plane was hardest part, portholes were quite small... but we got in," said one diver. But he said the team found everything they were looking for and termed it a successful mission. An alligator was found in the retention lake in the past so future dive teams might find other surprising challenges.    Courtesy of WPTV.com - Jon Shainman    2010-03-18T00:00:00-04:00 2010-03-19T15:25:47-04:00 https://www.tcpublicsafetytraining.com/news/detail/id/4 FORT PIERCE, Fla. --   St. Lucie County deputies braved chilly water temperatures to dive a mock plane crash scene Thursday. Courtesy of WPBF.com ABC25