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ZEBULON - Imagine wearing 60 or 70 pounds of equipment as you are making sure that a burning house is empty of all inhabitants or working to put out a fire in a burning house. The gear is hot, the fire is hotter, and you lose your way in the house in which you are working or you find victims and need help to get them to get them to safety. It’s a worst case scenario situation, but when you train for the worst and everything else is ‘a piece of cake’.
Pike County Emergency Services (PCES) held Disoriented Firefighter Training last week to show how to rescue a victim in a burning house or find the way back to help in an emergency situation. It was very labor intensive training, according to PCES Chief Mike Grant, but if the real thing happens, they will remember it.
PCES recommissioned a trailer from a prior grant and turned it into the rehab trailer that will carry all of the equipment needed to by firefighters to cool down after coming out of a fire. They simply sit in the chairs for ten minutes and immerse their forearms in water while they are spritzed with water and fan blows on them.
Firefighter and 1st Responder Randy Martin is the Rehab Coordinator for PCES. He took their blood pressure and Auxiliary members like Teri Totten keep track of their stats on paper. Firefighters rehydrate while cooling off and cannot go back into the fire until they are given the ok by FF Martin.
If a firefighter doesn’t cool off in ten minutes then there is a requirement to sit for another ten and so on until the body core temperature is back to normal. “This was money well spent,” said Chief Grant. “Heat strokes are the second highest killer of firefighters.”
The message of taking care of themselves in a fire was brought home time and time again during this exercise. “If you don’t feel good, tell someone,” was said over and over again. “You have got to take care of you before you can take care of someone else,” said Chief Grant.
This exercise was fairly simple to accomplish. Firefighters went into the old house and suited up. Hoods were pulled down over their eyes to ensure that they couldn’t see, and they had to send out an emergency call on the second fire channel before finding their way out of the house by following over 500 foot of hose over and around two different rooms. Maneuvering around furniture was part of the exercise too.
“Smooth, bump, bump… back to the pump” was repeated over and over as firefighters followed the way that the hoses were hooked up to find their way out of the building. More experienced firefighters were paired up with those who needed the experience of this exercise. Officers were being instructors and leading by example in this exercise.
The encouragement inside of the house was phenomenal and the rehab tent worked like a charm. There were about twenty firefighters there to participate in this exercise including a firefighter who signed on two days and had just received his gear and a firefighter who had signed up less than 24 hours prior to the Disoriented Firefighter Training.
