This manual provides emergency response agencies and their personnel with the information needed to meet the Operations-level requirements of NFPA 1670, Standard on Operations and Training for Technical Search and Rescue Incidents (2004).

Since there are currently no Operations-level professional qualifications standards for technical rescuers, this manual identifies the requirements that agencies must meet, and the tools and techniques that their personnel must master if they are to provide Operations-level rescue service within their jurisdictions.

This manual focuses primarily on Operations-level situations to which firefighters and rescue squad members are most often called. However, to provide Operations-level fire/rescue personnel with the background information needed to effectively support and participate in complex technical search and rescue operations, some Technician-level information has been included. In addition, because firefighters constitute the primary intended audience for this manual, fireground search and rescue has also been included even though it is not addressed in NFPA 1670.