Austin Firefighters Rope Rescue Team Wins Top Honors at the 2007 Rescue Competition

Team Members
Jeff Deane / David Gilliland / Kyle Grieser / Heath Haddock / Patrick Lynott / John Marney / Matt McElearney / Wayne Morris / Keith Radovich / Monty Strange / DJ Walker / Chris Youngblood

Local 975, an annual sponsor of the team, congratulates everyone on a job well done!

The 2007 Austin Firefighters Rope Rescue Team (aka Llamas Mountain Rescue) recently placed first in the Advanced Division of the Wilderness Rescue Competition at Garner State Park. Austin Firefighters have competed in the rescue competition for the past decade and this is the 3rd straight year to win 1st place. The 2007 team is includes AFD regular & special operations firefighters, as well as Westlake firefighters.

The Wilderness Rescue competition began in 1978 to provide an arena for training & competition and is a grueling three-day competition. Public Safety organizations in Texas compete in a series of challenging mountain / wilderness scenarios with actual patients designed to test the effectiveness and efficiency of each team’s rescue preparedness, teamwork abilities, incident command management, scene safety, emergency medical skills and on/off scene communications.

The competitions involve three progressively more difficult rescue evolutions. The first tier involves a slope evacuation of an injured patient. The second tier is a vertical cliff face evacuation. The third tier involves rescuing a victim from a deep cave or crevice and then evacuating the rescued patient down a steep mountainside. Teams are graded by experienced rescue instructors and specialist from throughout Texas.