Scotia Cranes provided the Massachusetts Task Force- 1 (MATF-1), the New England Regional FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) task force, with three cranes for a specialized training session in Beverly, Mass recently. The MATF-1 is comprised of nearly 100% local Firefighters who volunteer their time at the Beverly Facility in order to be ready for a disaster or critical situation.
The people who run the facility (the training team) were local firefighters who responded to ground zero on 9/11 in New York City for search and rescue operations. “It was very humbling to sit at lunch and dinner with these people and listen to their stories of chaos when they arrived on site the same day the [Twin Towers] were attacked. These men and women are the real deal, I would say comparable to the U.S. military as far as their will to intentionally put their lives on the line to save others in catastrophic situations. They also were deployed to Hurricane Katrina,” said Mike Crowell, Scotia Cranes president.
Throughout the year at the Beverly MATF-1 facility, the representatives and instructors run a series of training sessions for firefighters and qualified personnel to train for possible deployments. Each training session has a specific purpose. The most recent training session was focused on instructing freighters in how to work with and around cranes for their Heavy Equipment and Rigging Specialist training (HERS training).
Scotia Cranes provided three cranes to work with the FEMA crew in Beverly: a 60-ton capacity Grove GMK3055 all-terrain crane, and two 70-ton Grove RT770E rough-terrain cranes, all bought or rented through Shawmut Equipment Co. Inc. The crew used the cranes to rig all the rubble out of the way to uncover and recover people and victims during the instruction by the Urban Search and Rescue Division (US&R). The class included 74 different firefighters from various municipalities within the New England Region. Scotia Cranes performed rigging and hand signal training, scale pans training and personnel basket training.
“It was a privilege and honor for Scotia Cranes to have the opportunity to work with such extraordinary, brave and selfless people who quietly walk amongst all of us locally each day on a regular basis,” said Crowell.