This history is written by Glenn Jansen one of the founding members who continues to dedicate his time, energy and resources to the York County Advanced Technical Rescue team.

March of 1993 a meeting was held at Station 9 Dover Township after incident at Modern landfill. Dover Township had been called along with many other rescue companies to help with a confined space rescue. There was a man down a vent hole at the landfill. It was pretty obvious at this call that “specialized" rescue was lacking in York County. Meeting attendance included members from stations 9, 2 and 5. We started some preliminary discussion but really did not get organized very well. Eventually 2 and 5 stop coming to the meetings.

In Oct 1993 we were called to Brunner Island to assist with recovery of a worker in the number one stack. This was a wake up call for Dover Township since we really did not have a lot of rope gear. After this we spent $6000 on rope gear and got a whole bunch of people qualified, most to Rope Level III certification. In November 1993 we were called to Handwerk quarry to assist with an engulfment rescue. This was our first “save”. Dover Township arrived, I walked to the top of the pile to talk to George Drees, Station 9 personnel went underground, a key stone was pulled and Drees yelled haul and out the guy came.

In early 1994 Dover Township built the rope training tower. In April 1994, we tried a bigger meeting with stations 34, 35, 2, 49, 66, 5 and 64 in attendance. At the next meeting only Station 9 showed up so we formed a Technical Rescue Team within the station. Shortly after this, Fred Sentz, Craig and Katrina Fausnaught joined the team. Andy Crouse came on board and started to pull Station 46 Hanover into the mix. In late 1994 we broke the county into 2 sections and begin to write an SOG and hold regular meetings. July 1994 Dover Township held its first trench class to the rear of the existing station in the field. We used Spec Rescue of Virginia, Chase Sergeant and his group for the training.

In 1995 we ran a seminar to raise money inviting Chase and his group back to talk about Oklahoma City bombing incident. Only had 20 people attend and we took a loss on the cost of the program. June 1995 we helped unearth a homicide victim that was located on Harmony Grove road in Dover Township. Gary Leathery and I rigged our tri-pod over top of the victim so that we could suspend a state trooper over the site to take pictures. This was a very long night!

Late 90’s we had groups begin to attend Baltimore County Fire Department Trench classes. This group realized that we needed something to carry the equipment we had and the equipment we were going to need move forward with the team. I approached the fire school for help and the York County Fire Chief’s Association gave us the old Hazmat truck in the summer 1996. Dover Township spent about $5,000 to repair and paint the truck then spent another $5,000 in equipment purchases. This unit was in service until 2001 when the motor blew.

November 1997 was our first meeting with two members from Yoe Station 36. They felt they could help with our endeavors with rope related calls. Shortly after Rick Rorrer and Glenn agreed to bring on Station 36 to help cover the south end of the county. In 1997 the SOG’s were revised. The team continued to meet, train and prepare themselves for technical rescue responses in York County.

Station 61 Shrewsbury joined the team in 2001 after discussion and agreement from the three stations. This added a fourth element covering the south eastern portions of the county. This placed the four company’s in all four corners of the county. June 2002 Met with Chief Sevinson to begin talks of regional technical response. In 2002 $8,000 was spent on the existing trailer.

Budweiser Brewery Products of York provided the team a used delivery truck. Yoe Fire Company agreed to house the unit at their station and provided personnel to respond the unit on calls. The member stations assumed responsibility for the truck and its up-keep. After hard work by the team members the truck was placed in service as Collapse 36. This unit holds much of our heavy equipment for collapse rescues.

In 2008 after many swift water rescue responses, due to flood waters after heavy storms, our resources were quickly depleted. We discussed the need to partner with other water rescue teams and boat teams throughout the adjacent counties. John Sanford and I coordinated a meeting with our team and boat teams to discuss how we could better utilize boat team personnel and our team's swift water rescue personnel. Swift and flood water rescue responses represented the highest call volume in 2008 for our team. This meeting was successful in developing pre-plans for water rescue responses. We also staged ATR and in-county boat resources at the request of the Baltimore County Fire Department at Station 61 for flooding expected as a result of hurricane Hanna. This was the first time our team was included in the incident action plan as a resource backing-up Baltimore County's USAR team and other Baltimore County resources deployed for the expected flooding. We successfully provided back-up teams ready to respond into York County as a result of the meetings and relationships built with boat and water team resources.

The team is an all volunteer organization receiving funding for operations, training and equipment largely by each of the four member stations. Our annual fundraiser, Trench Weekend, helps with our expenses and supplements equipment purchases for the team. The South Central Task Force, formed after 9/11, has assisted the team to receive federally funded equipment purchased for Urban Search and Rescue. The York County ATR is a local county resource within the USAR structure responding to incidents with other local USAR elements in a multi-county response area in the South Central Region.

I can’t believe it has been almost 16 years that this team has been worked on. To think that when we started with 2 SABA units that no one really knew how to use and some junk rope to where we are today. You cannot imagine how proud I am of everyone. The team has had our ups and downs but we’ve made tremendous strides. Be proud and be safe!

York County ATR

Team History