New Jersey Rescue Team Engineer Worked to Prevent Second Collapse
New Jersey's Urban Search and Rescue team has a cool shorthand designation--Task Force 1. Its mission, trying to locate and save people in a disaster, requires guts and technical know-how. Created in 1997, the task force consists of specially trained and equipped firefighters, police, emergency medical personnel and engineers. They brought their German Shepherds and probing cameras and worked long hours in Manhattan after the World Trade Center attack of Sept. 11, 2001.
But if there was any proof needed of the peril and precautions needed for its work, just check with engineer Bryan Juncosa. He is a Kinnelon, N.J.-based marine and civil engineer who played a key role in the task force's work at the Tropicana rescue and recovery operation in Atlantic City on October 30, 2003. Just prior to talking about the Tropicana with ENR, Juncosa completed a detoxification therapy program needed to relieve the lingering health problems from his 9-11 work.