Cedar Rapids-based task force responded to Davenport building collapse

CEDAR RAPIDS — The emergency response to a Davenport apartment building that collapsed May 28 — killing three and injuring several others — involved specially trained members of Iowa Task Force 1 from Cedar Rapids and Sioux City.

The Cedar Rapids task force was called a couple of hours after the collapse, which happened around 5 p.m. Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend. The team, trained in search and rescue techniques, arrived in Davenport at midnight.

Though the team returned to Cedar Rapids soon afterward, it was called back to assist in the search for and then recovery of bodies this past weekend, according to Rick Halleran, a Cedar Rapids firefighter and battalion chief of the Cedar Rapids task force.

The Sioux City-based task force also was called in, and members from both teams worked with Davenport first responders to shore up the building and determine how to safely begin search and rescue.

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“You look at the structural elements, and while you're looking at the structural elements, you start doing a search. While you’re starting to do the search, then you look at accessibility,” Halleran said.

“You can't get into this part of the building because the doors are damaged, so you have to go through another part. You might have to go through walls to get to another part of the building, but you can't make too much damage or too many problems with the stability of the building because the building is already unstable.

“That's why you're there.”

The apartment building collapse is the largest such incident the task force has handled, Halleran said. The team started in 2003 and has about 50 members in each of its two divisions.

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“That's a big event down there. You can put that building in large metropolitan areas, and it's a big event for an L.A., a Houston, a New York City, a Chicago. It’s a big event. And here, it's in Davenport. Davenport, in the reality of Iowa, is a big city.,” Halleran said.

Such a catastrophe, he said, “could completely overwhelm even large municipalities.”

The task force

The Cedar Rapids task force is made up of mostly Cedar Rapids firefighters but also has some civilian members. The training and equipment upkeep is done on a volunteer basis, but team members are compensated by Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management for the time they spend deployed on assignments.

The team typically responds to smaller building collapses, sometimes related to fires or flooding. Members also help with search and rescue operations related to natural disasters and missing persons cases.

“It’s everything from bombs going off, to building collapses, to a little kiddo that walked away from home and can’t be found, and a lot of things in between,” Halleran said. “It’s a really bad terminology, but the concept of it is, we’re the fire department’s fire department.”

Since the team is made up of civilians and firefighters, it can take some time to get the team together to respond to an emergency, Halleran said, meaning local fire departments start the emergency response.

Task force members who are firefighters and on-duty when the call comes have to call someone else to replace them at the fire station. Civilians and firefighters who are off-duty may not be available or may not immediately get an emergency alert.

With the Davenport collapse happening during Memorial Day weekend, Halleran worried many of the Cedar Rapids team members would be out of town or otherwise unavailable. He was hoping for at least 15 members; 33 showed up.

Davenport experience

The Cedar Rapids team returned to Cedar Rapids the day after the collapse — after helping shore up the building and analyzing stability levels — but stayed in communication with other emergency teams.

It was asked to return to Davenport for search and rescue efforts three days later, on June 1, and assisted in the recovery of three bodies on this past Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Halleran on June 2 responded to questions about the delay in searching the rubble for the three men: “We do what the building tells us to do.”

Officials had previously noted the remnants of the six-story apartment building were constantly in motion in the first 24 to 36 hours after it collapsed, which posed a risk to rescuers.

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“There are a lot of moving parts to understand how you go after that particular incident, and everything is kind of related to one another,” Halleran told The Gazette.

The building’s collapse was “such a horrible, tragic event,” he said. “On the backside of it, it (the task force) operated as designed. There are always things to improve upon and do different next time, but the amount of cooperation on multiple levels with different agencies, groups and people at different levels, was really good.”

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com