Local firefighters are seen during heavy rescue training in their Marshall Avenue training compound Thursday. Firefighters from all four station participated in the full day training program that teaches first responders how to safely extract an injured person from a heavy vehicle accident.--NEWS PHOTO BRENDAN MILLER
bmiller@medicinehatnews.com
Local firefighters have been training all week on how to manoeuvre large vehicles including school buses and semi trucks following a collision where a victim may need to be extracted.
In a training scenario at the Marshall Avenue compound a small two-door vehicle found itself wedged under the rear end of a school bus and firefighters needed to safely extract the driver in the front seat by lifting the roughly 30,000-pound bus.
Although this kind of emergency is considered ‘low frequency,’ local firefighters say they want to be proactive in their training so they are prepared for worst-case situations.
“It allows us to hone our skills on the equipment we have and think outside the box and pre plan and prepare for a call that we might not have,” says firefighter Troy Vjelland. “Last place you want to practise is on a highway.”
Fire crews at each station in the city spend one day going over the training scenario with heavy-equipment extraction experts form Calgary.
Due to the size, weight and shape of heavy vehicles like coach buses and semi trucks, more communication and labour for first responders is required to perform an emergency extraction.
Fire Cpt. Chris Prosofsky says first responders have to approach collisions involving heavy vehicles much differently than those involving passenger vehicles.
“Something like this is a little out of the ordinary,” says Prosofsky. “It’s good to build up your skills and build up your confidence so when you get to those scenes, we can look at it and say, ‘We got this.'”
In this scenario fire crews learned how to properly lift and stabilize the school bus, allowing first responders to go in and safely extract occupants from the much smaller car.
Any sort of shift in the school bus can have an impact on the safety of first responders and the victim in the car. Firefighters were trained on working together as a team to stabilize the bus with wood cribbing and hydraulic pumps.
Officials say it’s unique training that allows local firefighters to work on skills they don’t use every day, but which could save a life when every second counts.
“I know that every guy in our department is going to be there to help my family, your family, everybody’s families,” says Prosofsky. “We’re lucky that we get the opportunity to train like this, it’s a big intensive work day.”
Training days this week also included working with struts, cutters, spreader, rams as well as cribbing and blocking.
To prevent the bus from shifting and falling over while lifted, firefighters add wood cribbing on both ends to winch it up, inch by inch to keep it as stable as possible. Crews have to constantly communicate and work as a team to prevent the school bus from falling over, causing more injury.
“Then we stop, we do a walk-around and make sure everything’s safe,” explains Prosofsky. “We hand out our assignments for everybody and then we start the evolution.”
Although this week’s training is unique, it’s not uncommon for firefighters to participate in monthly training sessions to develop skills.
“When you can go and put together a scenario like this and get on scene and have someone out of here in less than seven minutes is pretty awesome,” says Prosofsky. “I’m very proud of our guys in our department and thankful that we get these opportunities.”
