Structural Collapse Simulators

Who is willing to provide "hard" copies of collapsed structure simulators that your agency uses? What "features" should this set-up have?

We make our own. We have a very good supply of concrete products which we have acquired over the last few years which are stored at the road dept garage. One way we have simulated such is to use RCP and different types of construction materials. The pipe is set on the ground, and between each pipe section a "wall" is built. We have a large supply of sheetrock and lumber to make these walls with, steel and sheet metal to simulate industrial walls, and conrete slabs to simulate heavy wall type construction. With 4 pieces of RCP you can have a wall of each type to have the crews breach. The concrete breach is the most challenging, as there is alot of noise, debris and is very labor intensive. We have the guys using the Stanley breakers try different ways of positioning themselves to get comfortable holding the breaker. We also let them try the concrete chainsaw which makes quite a mess. In this case we have guys put on tyvek suits to try to keep them as dry as possible.

We also have planned an evolution at the local fire training center to build alot of walls and voids and place victims in it. With our small slabs and sheetrock we will block some entry ways and force teams to have to make wall breaches and such.

We have about 8 large concrete slabs (8'x8'x12"),6 small slabs (6'x6'x8"), 6 "mafia blocks", 4 pieces of 36"ID RCP and 2 pieces of 24"ID RCP. Next plan is to try to acquire one or two "double tees." to simulate floor collapses.

All of this material was not free, but a local large concrete company cut us a decent deal. Home depot gave us a good deal on not so great 2x4's and sheetrock and we have scrounged alot of other stuff over time.

[This message has been edited by e33 (edited May 19, 1999).]

Billy, our SAR Team has done this the cheap but effective way, several local contactors donated the concrete Tubes approx 12 ft long by 5 ft tall along with Rebar laiden Concrete slabs, we built several 6 ft long by 3 ft tall Boxes and covered them with mixed lumber. We have several Tubes made out of standard car tires joined togeather. We just wanted somthing small less than 2 ac for our SAR dogs to be able to work light debris on and it seems to work well for our pourposes, Texas A&M fire training field has a real good Simulator with multipule voids and Victim Compartments it is about four acres or more.