Proposed additions to Alhambra's Fire Training Facility will allow for extensive multi-company, multi-agency search and rescue training operations.

 Urban Search & Rescue Training Site Approved by City Council

 
       The existing Training Facility

In 2003 the City of Alhambra established a Fire Department training center that has served to strengthen response capabilities of not only our own Fire Department, but also law enforcement agencies and regional Fire Departments that, along with Alhambra, make up Area “C” Unified Response: Arcadia, Burbank, Glendale, Monrovia, Pasadena, San Gabriel, San Marino, Sierra Madre, and South Pasadena. 

Traditionally, emergency agency responses centered mostly on local occurrences of personal tragedy and problems caused by Mother Nature, but in this post-9/11 world, in which response to terrorist activities, in addition to catastrophic natural disasters, is a necessary skill, the Department of Homeland Security has been funding training and equipment to assist local agencies to respond to major disasters on a regional basis.

Alhambra has been the recipient of two such major assets: the Alhambra Police Department’s law-enforcement mutual-aid command center vehicle and the Alhambra Fire Department’s Urban Search and Rescue vehicle.

Alhambra recently received a $584,000 grant, and the City Council has authorized the expansion of the training facility (actually, a series of “simulators” attached together in a realistic streetscape) that allows for extensive multi-company, multi-agency search and rescue training operations.

Future training in Search and Rescue operations involves  high and low angle rope rescue, trench rescue, heavy lifting, building collapse, shoring props, confined space operations, searches, rescue situations, and mass transportation extrication problems.

The City of Alhambra serves as an equal partner in area and regional responses to natural and other disasters, and the Alhambra Fire Department is proud that its facilities will continue to be the focus of region-wide training, but on a much larger scale.