Clackamas Fire and Military Responders Conduct Structural Collapse and Air Mobility Joint Training Exercise

In a joint disaster response effort, Oregon National Guardsmen, along with U.S. Coast Guard and Air Force reservists, teamed up with the Clackamas County Fire District to support rescue operations after a simulated tsunami struck the Oregon Coast. The exercise, held on October 15, 2026, at Camp Rilea Armed Forces Training Center near Warrenton, Oregon, focused on air mobility and structural collapse rescue operations.

The training exercise simulated the chaos after a massive earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone triggered a tsunami that struck coastal towns and left victims trapped beneath collapsed buildings, far from immediate help. Two Oregon Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopters from Bravo Co., 1-168th Aviation, transported first-responder teams from the Portland Air National Guard Base to Camp Rilea, carrying extraction gear, medical supplies, and vital communications equipment. Working side by side, Air Force special warfare service members and other crews raced to locate and rescue survivors, coordinating daring air evacuations with the U.S. Coast Guard Station Astoria using its MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters.

The training focused on building a comprehensive statewide urban search-and-rescue response, a key objective in recent exercises involving Clackamas County Fire and regional military first-responder teams. Within the framework of a full-scale exercise at Camp Rilea, local media affiliates and elected officials were invited to observe the training and get an up-close look at the joint response effort.

"What’s most challenging is that when we take a look at our response framework in Oregon for a structural collapse, we are lacking a big piece, and that is an urban search and rescue program," said Mariana Ruiz-Temple, Oregon State Fire Marshal, speaking to the media.

She said that at one point, the state had its own urban search and rescue team, organized into 10 districts. Now, it is at the department level. However, Clackamas Fire District is part of the "all-hazards mutual aid system." This means it can respond to emergencies beyond its borders when local teams become overwhelmed in the face of a large-scale disaster.

Helicopter response was a critical feature of the training, as roads and bridges made areas along the Pacific Coastline extremely difficult to access. Specialized equipment, normally designed to be transported on existing roadways, would need to be flown in, making military aviation crews vital to recovery efforts and to reaching trapped survivors as quickly as possible.

"How do we find victims within that first 24 hours, which is really the key critical time to find victims," Ruiz-Temple said. "The survivor rate dramatically drops after 24 hours."

As crews quickly unloaded pallets of equipment at two separate landing zones at Camp Rilea, more than 20 Clackamas County firefighters trained in Urban Search and Rescue, and nearly two dozen military special operations personnel sprang into action. The “Rubble Pile,” a specialized collapse training site at Camp Rilea, simulated the response area.

Before the air crew's arrival, members of Charon Human Advocacy Intervention Services (CHAIS), which provides professional handlers and working dogs, searched the site for victims. A team from Oregon Health Sciences University’s Trauma team also participated in the exercise, using the opportunity to interface with the joint response effort.

“Our Urban Search and Rescue Task Force is able to deploy in different areas around the region,” said Lynsey Amundson, the public information officer with Clackamas Fire District, describing the tsunami training condition. “If a tsunami came in, and they need help out here (along the coastline), we could work with the Oregon National Guard and Coast Guard to get out here in these communities and help in those operations.”

Earlier this year, these same groups took part in a series of training exercises focused on air monitoring after a toxic chemical release and airborne operations along the Sandy River in response to severe flooding.

Since late February, many of these agencies have come together in a joint effort to strengthen disaster response. The Oregon National Guard, along with other military first responders and the Clackamas Fire District, has participated in a three-part “crawl, walk, run” training series designed to strengthen collaborative incident-response capabilities. Spearheaded by Morgan West, Community Resilience Officer for the Clackamas Fire District, the series began on February 26 with the “crawl” phase: an air-monitoring exercise that responded to an accident involving a tank of anhydrous ammonia in Clackamas, Oregon. The culminating “run” phase on June 5 plunged teams into water rescues across Clackamas County’s rich and varied landscape. Oregon Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook and HH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, along with a U.S. Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk from Coast Guard Station Astoria, flew in to extract casualties stranded by rising floodwaters along the imaginary “Clackamine River.”

This tsunami response exercise used an established multi-agency approach, letting teams work on collapsed structures using best-practice procedures and bringing specialized skills to help recover victims. As rescue teams cut through concrete with saws, jackhammers, and sledgehammers, crews removed the simulated patients from the structures for air transport to the Coast Guard Jayhawks.

Members of the Oregon National Guard’s CERFP (Chemical Biological Nuclear and Radiological Enhanced Response Force Package), a specialized multi-agency team, also supported the exercise**.** They are trained to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive incidents, and recently conducted exercises with the Clackamas Fire District and Providence Medical Center Hospitals focused on chemical leak response and interagency coordination.

“Everyone has a different procedure for how they conduct response operations,” said Oregon Army National Guard 1st Lt. Emily Schroff, the operations officer in charge of the Oregon CERFP, when speaking with reporters. "When we train with them on the front end before a disaster occurs, it gives us the opportunity to find any issues that may arise or anything we need to get better at so that we're able to respond more efficiently and assist the public.”

Schroff said nine members of its normally 50-person team participated in the training, which focused on breaking through collapsed materials. Although the exercise did not simulate a chemical or biological response, an earthquake can release hazardous materials, as in Japan's March 11, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which led to radioactive releases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and widespread chemical contamination in coastal and industrial areas.

“With today’s exercise, we have the opportunity to work with other agencies and help identify any potential issues before it turns into real-world incidents,” she said. “This provides us with an opportunity to practice integrating military resources into a civilian disaster response.”

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