A team of 30 firefighters from East Lansing, Lansing and Meridian and Delta townships joined together in Delta Township on Thursday to finish a four-day long collapsed building training exercise.

Fire hoses and axes were put aside in favor of power saws and nail guns. The training scenario required participants to build reinforcements for crumbling walls, assess victims and safely remove them from the collapsing structure.

"The training is a compilation of all these departments trying to get together to work as a team," said Richard Meister, commander of the exercise and Delta Township deputy fire chief.

The participants are members of the Metro Lansing Urban Search and Rescue Task Force, a group that responds to an array of high-risk, low-frequency events in the region.

The task force handles specialty cases involving such things as collapsed buildings and high-rise, confined space and trench rescues, Meister said.

An abandoned dentist office, the structure used in the exercise, was donated by the structure's owners and then intentionally made to collapse by a local construction company. Four dummies acting as victims were trapped inside.

"It's all those things that 30 years ago we didn't consider part of the fire service, but it truly became part of the service's responsibilities," Meister said.

The squad, established in 1999, is part of a larger 68-person statewide task force that responds to emergency situations.

Gretchen Kohsmann, a Lansing firefighter involved in the exercise, said the training has been intense and exhausting for everyone involved.

"Guys are saying that they're falling asleep as soon as they get home," Kohsmann said.

Kohsmann said she volunteered about two years ago because "it was just part of the job."

Most of the participants join voluntarily, but certain firefighters are preferred, Meister said.

"The younger personnel in our department are in a lot better shape than some of the older ones," Meister said. "It takes a lot of physical endurance and strength, so the personnel that we select have a lot of these attributes."

Kent Nordlund, a Delta Township firefighter, joined the department four years ago, and participated in Thursday's training scenario.

Nordlund said he volunteered and began training soon after.

"Its just another challenge," Nordlund said.