Canadian Responders Practice Disaster Skills
Hundreds of emergency response workers from across Canada clawed and drilled their way through the rubble of a badly damaged highrise yesterday in one of country's largest ever disaster exercises.
The realistic scenario, designed to look like the aftermath of a car bombing of an office tower, included rescuing and treating scores of mock victims covered in fake blood or with simulated injuries.
Dogs sniffed out "victims'' from beneath twisted cement and steel, while rescuers working in sub-zero temperatures used jackhammers to drill their way through concrete walls and clambered through the holes.
Others, decked out in full protective gear, built wooden support structures to stabilize the partially collapsed building, requested specific assistance as they encountered difficulties, or called for stretchers to ferry the wounded.
In a tent hospital set up nearby, dozens of medical personnel treated the "wounded.''
