Members of the state's rescue team were faced with real-life emergency scenarios in a three-day training at Fort Dix. Watch video
LAKEHURST -- After Hurricane Sandy made landfall at the Jersey Shore, the New Jersey Task Force One Urban & Rescue search team worked for six days straight.
The rescue team, comprised of more than 210 members from firefighters to structural engineers, made more than 1,000 rescues, checked 16,000 houses and clocked in more than 5,000 hours in volunteer time.
But the NJ - TF1 has also conducted search and rescue missions at Ground Zero following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and during Hurricane Irene.
"We can't control when a disaster is going to occur," said Lt. Brian Polite, a New Jersey State Police spokesman, "but we can control our response to it."
On Sunday, members of the media were invited to tour a series of training exercises at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst conducted by the state's Task Force One Urban & Rescue search team. The media tour was the culmination of a three-day training session at the fort, dubbed "Operation Derecho." The full-scale emergency response exercise is also designed to assess the state's capabilities.
"When you see these men and women in action, it's an unbelievable machine," said State Police Lt. Douglas Lemanowicz, who led the media tour. "These are the unsung heroes. They do it for no pay, they don't do it for anything."
Lemanowicz said the rescue team is trained to be self-sufficient for three days, can operate 24 hours a day and conduct missions for a 14-day period.
Kevin J. Stewart, deputy fire chief in Jersey City and a senior controller with the NJ -TF1, said the team is made up of members from every county in the state. Some of the members are uniformed officers, like firefighters and K-9 handlers, and others are civilian, like structural engineers and medical personnel, Stewart said.
For four hours on Sunday, the members executed "rescues" throughout a mock town built at the NJ - TF1 training facility in Lakehurst. The facility is designed to simulate a real town, from a school building and a church to tunnels and even a fake cemetery.
The training incorporates actors to make the scenarios as close to reality as possible. But, for the media tour, rescue team members rescued dummies from the top of roofs, out of confined spaces and wrecked cars, and out from underneath a fallen tree.
All the scenarios, Lemanowicz said, are ones rescue members could face if a town is under a state of emergency.
"This is as real as it gets," Lemanowicz said of the training. "This is what we do. It's not comfortable. It's not sexy. And it's not for T.V. ... This is search and rescue."
Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.