Special Report - FDNY Search and Rescue Conference 2025
Special Edition --
Next Sunday, I plan to share another interesting essay on the Chinese in California during the Gold Rush. In the meantime . . .
Greetings, this week instead of the usual offerings, I am sharing some photos I took at the 2025 FDNY Search and Rescue Conference put on by FDNY Pro, the New York City Fire Department’s not-for-profit arm last weekend. The event consists of a two day conference attended by rescue and emergency medical services personnel from around the nation and world, and two additional, optional days of special, pre-conference training activities offering specialized instruction in that field. While last year I paid my own way and attended strictly as an enthusiastic EMT eager to be exposed to new ideas, meet interesting people, and learn as much as possible, this time I was there as a freelance writer for the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, formerly a highly respected print trade magazine for that field and now a website and podcast source. Honestly, juggling back and forth from enthusiastic EMT (actually Advanced EMT now. I got more training this year) to journalist was not always easy, but I did my best. Occasionally I had to stop what I was doing and focus on picture taking instead.
(To see my writings for that publication, click HERE Expect to see several articles related to the conference here. )
Below you can see several photos from Saturday and Sunday’s conference activities. Thursday and Friday this year, I attended a two day course called Tactical Emergency Casualty Care or TECC which is designed to teach emergency medical responders how to function in a situation where there are many injured people and the scene is not safe for the responders. This could be, for instance, an active shooter or terrorist attack type situation, but other possible examples exist. Perhaps I will share those photos later.
Last year I had one day of snake, scorpion, spider, and bee sting or bite training, followed by the second day of training on the treatment of burns. These were both offered again this year and while I would have enjoyed attending and seeing the awesome instructors from last year again, it simply was not possible to do so.
Last week, I wrote a piece on EMS in Taiwan in the early 1990s. I may try to write a piece on firefighting and EMS in South Korea in the future. We will see.
To best see each photo, right click and open in a new tab please.
Upper Row / Left, Center, Right: A Long Island Volunteer Firefighter dressed for training, Center and Right, Instructors from Rhode Island Medical Reserve Corp teaching about how to respond to a multi-casualty shooting or other event. The instructor on the left is teaching how to use straps to drag people to safety quickly and the instructor on the right is teaching about how to stop bleeding from gunshot wounds or other serious punctures or lacerations.
Middle and Bottom Rows: A major type of training on the weekend involved responding to incidents where an automobile or other vehicle has run over a large number of pedestrians. This could be either intentional or unintentional and as there have been two in North America that made the news in the last week, it’s a great idea for a training scenario. The FDNY has been doing a lot of training scenarios lately where they combine this with an active shooter or terrorist attack. The participants in bright orange and blue are firefighters and emergency medical responders (paramedics and registered nurses who work in ambulances) from South Korea. The mock victims were students from a local community college’s paramedic program and some had a great time screaming and yelling and asking questions (i.e. “Where’s my uncle? Why aren’t you telling me if my uncle is okay? Is my uncle dead?”) to add realism and chaos to the drill.
Starting at the top, books and other items for sale at the conference. Lecture slides and a lecturer (I watched the lectures on a screen in the building cafeteria where I could have a table to myself and best take notes. Most of the lectures were physicians internationally recognized in their fields, but this one was an FDNY officer teaching about impalement response). The center photo is two emergency room physicians from Kaohsiung, Taiwan who attended the conference. They are both involved in Search and Rescue operations and civil defense preparations for mass casualty incidents including possible scenarios involving a Chinese attack on the self-governing, democratically run island. They had both responded to assist with the recent earthquake in Turkey. More photos of the trainers from the event including a particularly interesting but gruesome training mannikin of a large dog used for training.
A few photos of the South Korean attendees. The woman on the left in light blue is their official translator but she is an employee of the Korean national fire agency involved in training and educational standards,
Saturday photos. Starting at the top left, a physician from the United Arab Emirates training inside one of the many tunnels at the FDNY’s 66 acre training center on Randall’s Island. Slides from lectures. The middle right slide shows an FDNY recruiting table to find new candidates for the USA’s largest fire department. Bottom left. A pre-packaged, commercial grab-and-go kit for a mass casualty or active shooter evet. More shots of the mass casualty, auto vs pedestrian training site at Randall’s Island.
Top row: the FDNY impalement training center where they practice on how to extricate and treat people who suffer impalement from various causes. There was a very well done and informative lecture on responding to impalements. Obviously, responding to an impalement incident as removing the injured person with the least bit of damage as quickly as possible can be a real challenge and is helped by training. Additional photos of the Taiwanese physicians, another of the physician from the United Arab Emirates, and a couple photos of women led training scenarios involving technical rescue, crawling in tunnels, and starting IVs under difficult conditions (at the end of those tunnels was a set up to practice starting IVs.)
In conclusion, both years I have attended this event, it was an awesome experience, where I learned a lot, met great people, and felt honored and fortunate to have the chance to attend and participate. I am glad that the FDNY shared their facilities and expertise by hosting it.