Pittsburg firefighters attend specialized disaster training session

Several members of the Pittsburg Fire Department have returned from their annual training session as members of a special response team. The first responders are part of Task Force 4, which responds to natural disasters that occur in the southeast corner of Kansas.

“We did a lot of wide area search and it helps us familiarize ourselves with our GPS’s, so we can mark our way points, track victim locations, and then we did a lot of shoring,” explained firefighter Cody Hobbs. “We did some breach and break and then we did some confined space searches.”

The session took place in Salina at a location called “Crisis City.” Task force members house different types of equipment needed to respond to disasters at various fire stations throughout Southeast Kansas.