Rescue Scenarios with Better Technology | Breakthrough

Hi, I'm Tim Maloney, Vice President of Operations here at Guardian Centers.

Guardian Centers was built in response to historical events. Hurricane Katrina and Sandy would be on the forefront of the decision-making process. We have set up national exercises for the Department of Defense around a complete nuclear disaster. We have set up a hurricane and earthquake scenario for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We have set up scenarios like the Boston bombing for Georgia's Counterterrorism Task Force.

The scale and scope of Guardian Centers allows us to work one department up to multi-agency, multi-level responses on a national level to test a forto suit. We designed a rescue scenario combining structural collapse and vehicular extrication. The collapse structure was chosen mainly because we were trying to demonstrate that working with extrication tools or rescue tools at an elevated position puts a heavy strain on the body and it takes time.

So, when you're working in collapses, there's a significant amount of manpower that's required to do life-saving operations. By demonstrating that, the forto suit will provide efficiencies to generally small teams or small components in complex scenarios to get more work done, save more lives, and mitigate more suffering. Then that's what we want to demonstrate on the applicability of the forto suit in our response community.

Guardian Centers is a holistic training company. We have been able to work with Breakthrough to provide the forto suit, more than just giving them the location, the design, the components, how to set the car, how to set the scenario, and even how to train the responder that's going to be using the forto suit in the scenario.

Personally, I believe the technology is paramount to success. So, I think it's tremendous having the applicability and capability to save lives. To me, this is where we need to move. If we have technology, if we have engineering, if we have the capability to make people better, to save someone's life, then we need to execute that in every facet of what we do in the responder world.

'Cause at the end of the day, it's what it's all about; it's about saving lives.