FIRE TRAINING DRILLS: Fighting for themselves

Crew members learn how to rescue each other

Falling roofs that crack helmets. Floors that give way. Air tanks running out.

Everyone thinks of firefighters as the heroes who rescue people from burning buildings. But what if it's the firefighter who needs rescuing?

The Clark County Fire Department is now training its 660 firefighters how to deal with situations in which their buddies are in trouble.

The drills are based on real-life situations from around the country in which firefighters died. Most of them involved hypotoxia, a lack of oxygen.

An air bottle with 3,000 PSI lasts 18.7 minutes. But that figure is deceptive, it does not take into account the heavy breathing from exerting oneself.

One of the real-life situations came from a 1987 Columbus, Ohio, fire. There, a firefighter fell through a hole, got stuck and was so hypoxic when his buddies arrived to get him out, he tried to climb the rescue ladder upside down. He died.

In Pittsburgh, a 1995 supermarket blaze saw three firefighters get disoriented when they ran low on oxygen. They began following the hose line out. But they were so oxygen deprived, all three turned around and walked back into the flame-engulfed building where they died.

Tragedies like those drove Evan Hannah, engineer of Station 21, to establish proactive safety training. He and Bill Kolar, assistant chief, are responsible for teaching the rescue techniques to firefighters.

"You have to train as though your life depends on it," Hannah told the class. "Because it does."

Training began in the classroom, where a 25-minute Power Point presentation went through the bullet points of the program. Buzzwords and acronyms zinged about the room like stealth missiles. There was PPV (Positive Pressure Ventilator), RIC (Rapid Intervention Team), SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus), the acronyms were second nature to the class.

After the overview, the firefighters headed to the training tower. They were broken into four groups. Wearing full gear, except for masks and air tanks, the groups got a demonstration of how to handle various rescues. The first team learned how to carry a firefighter up a flight of stairs.

It was accomplished with one rescuer handling the torso end, the second rescuer handling the feet end. Their "victim" went limp as though he was unconscious.

The average firefighter weights 250 pounds wearing full gear, and the strain of lifting such dead weight was obvious.

"It's like moving a piano," groaned one firefighter as he worked his way up the stairs.

But working as a team, the two firefighters were able to take the fallen comrade all the way to the top. Then that team took a break while three other firefighters tried it. In the end, everyone went though the drill working the various positions.

Mike Atchley told of going into a huge linen supply building that had bedding stacked 10-feet high. The blaze disintegrated the mattresses until they were nothing but springs. Another firefighter suffered a heart attack, and Atchley and a buddy had to drag him outside.

"By the time we got him out, I'd lost my boots from the wires left by the burned-up mattresses," he said. "For a while we were stuck. We could hear people but we couldn't see them, and they were only as far away as from here to those guys right there."

Another drill taught how to evacuate a fallen firefighter through a second-story window. This involved two buddies handing off the unconscious firefighter at right angles to the ladder. The person on the ladder then used his or her weight to press the body against the ladder and slowly brought down the victim.

A third tactic had firefighters dragging a fallen buddy along the ground in a push-pull team effort. Just like the other exercises, members took turns in each rescue position.

More training sessions were scheduled at later dates to cover self rescues, bailouts and large-area team searches.

"This training, it may come in handy tonight or it may come in handy five years from now," Atchley said.

Funds for the training were provided by the Firefighters Assistance Act. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., stopped by to view the drills at the training facility, 4425 W. Tropicana Ave., and showed his support.

It will take approximately two months to train all county firefighters.


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