I'm seeing a lot of parallels to my volunteer work at the park with regards to exertion. There are ways for people of all abilities to help, but the crucial element is for people to be honest about their own abilities. Not only is there no shame in admitting that one cannot do something - its critical that one says so.
For the structural assessment and SAR, we basically had full run of the lower level of a medical center. We were shown a picture of a damaged building on doors to different hallways and asked to assess whether it was safe to enter or not, and why. One was safe, the other was not. We identified the safe building, and a volunteer set up an easel for us to mark off that we were entering and exiting. Once in, we had to break in to teams and conduct a search of several rooms off that hallway that were staged to simulate a Mass Casualty Incident. Hospital trash, disposal devices, and features of the building were worked in to the sim, so we had to conduct our search while avoiding biohazards, chemical spills, and locked doors. We had to quickly triage the people we did find, then mark off the building reporting on what we did find...including noting that we could not access part of the building due to the hazards or the locked doors.
