TOBYHANNA ARMY DEPOT, Pa. -- The assistant fire department chief here has been selected to join a national search and rescue program.
Daryl Gebhardt has been selected to become a member of Pennsylvania Task Force One, one of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's 28 national urban search and rescue teams spread throughout the continental United States. The agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
"It is contingent on completing the training, which I anticipate will be done in about six months," he said.
He is the third employee at Tobyhanna Army Depot to earn an invitation to join the Task Force.
Jeff Finlay, chief of Security and Emergency Management for the Defense Logistics Agency, a tenant organization here, was selected at the same time for the position of planning team manager with the task force.
The planning team manager is responsible for planning aspects of the Task Force during incident
operations.
A.J. Gilgallon, the depot's fire chief, has been on the team for 24 years, first as a search and rescue specialist and now as a safety officer.
Members are certified to participate in search and rescue missions anywhere in the United States.
They are comprised of more than 210 personnel from numerous participating agencies, and have been deployed in a number of major disaster response efforts, including hurricanes Floyd and Katrina, and at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack.
According to FEMA's Web site, teams are comprised of firefighters, engineers, medical professionals, canine/handler teams and emergency managers with special training in urban search-and-rescue environments who serve as a national resource for disaster response.
Urban search-and-rescue involves the location, rescue (extrication), and initial medical stabilization of victims trapped in confined spaces. Structural collapse is most often the cause of victims being trapped, but victims may also be trapped in transportation accidents, mines and collapsed trenches.
Gebhardt noted that a task force is totally self-sufficient for the first 72 hours of a deployment, so team members have to be in good physical condition.
He became aware of the task force after 9/11, saw their capabilities and made it a career goal to be a member.
"Since then I've taken several classes to meet the minimum entry requirements, which are in addition to my training as a firefighter" he said.
He applied to join in August 2013 and was selected for safety officer. The safety officer reviews and must support any action plan for a search and rescue operation to ensure the health and safety of all Task Force team members.
Gebhardt said the task force is highly selective in accepting team members and the training is more rigorous than then the usual training for a firefighter.
"It's taken eight years to get to this point of applying for the position," he said. "To be on this team, you have to be at the highest level of training for deployments. The people on these teams are the highest caliber, very knowledgeable and experienced."
The task force is a partnership between state fire departments, law enforcement agencies, federal and local governmental agencies and private companies.
Tobyhanna Army Depot is the Defense Department's largest center for the repair, overhaul and fabrication of a wide variety of electronics systems and components, from tactical field radios to the ground terminals for the defense satellite communications network. Tobyhanna's missions support all branches of the Armed Forces.
About 3,500 personnel are employed at Tobyhanna, which is located in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania. Tobyhanna Army Depot is part of the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command. Headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., the command's mission is to research, develop, acquire, field and sustain communications, command, control computer, intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors capabilities for the Armed Forces.
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