Red River SWAT Practices Breach Techniques in Flood Buyout Home

they practice nine hours a month

FARGO, N.D. — The Red River Valley SWAT team tests out some explosive breaching techniques on a house in South Fargo.

Because SWAT doesn’t always have the chance to test their tools to the point of failure on structures, they’re taking the opportunity to test them out on a flood buyout home. Testing their breaching techniques allows them to do things as safe as possible. SWAT trains about nine hours every month.

“Each structure, each building gives us a unique opportunity to test the tool that we have here basically to failure, seeing where it won’t work and seeing where it will work. So that’s what we’re doing today. We’re testing this high energy breaching to failure, collecting data so we can know what we can do on different doorways and different types of entry,” Lt. Bill Ahlfeldt, Red River SWAT team commander.

SWAT is called out to emergencies about 12 to 15 times a year.