Saturday, February 27, 2010

Special Forces in the Fire Service

I just attended my first fire-service relate course this weekend that has to do with technical rescue. This is all the cool stuff that firefighters might have to do at incidents not necessarily related to a fire. Not gonna lie, this stuff looks fun, especially the rope rescue training. Not everybody is excited at the thought of dangling from a rope supported by an improvised anchor, but as a hobbyist rock-climber, I already enjoy heights.

Rock climbing is a long shot from rope-rescue, though. I've clipped into my share of carabiners, but that's about it. This is a little more advanced. Think more along the lines of rigging up a system capable of supporting 2 rescuers plus a victim, lowering all the equipment necessary to package the injured party into a stokes basket dangling from the same set of equipment, and safely transitioning this whole party of people and hardware back to solid ground.

It's not an easy proposition, but it's certainly challenging and exciting. So far all we've really done its work on knots and anchors, but we'll be doing our share of rappelling practice and such before the class is done. I have no doubt that this will be one of my favorite experiences so far in the fire service.

What occurs to me is what I've experienced to a lesser degree on previous "rare" calls. You see, we don't exactly go flying off cliffs for rescues every other week. This is a really uncommon occurrence, and that makes training for it tougher. How much time should we be spending preparing for calls that almost never happen?

That's a tough question to answer because it's true that we spend most of our time on home medical calls. Our most widely applicable training, the most "bang for our buck", is what time we put in making our basic patient care better.

But we can't just ignore our uncommon scenarios. Vehicle extrications, for example, are uncommon; but they're horrendously dangerous if done wrong. Without proper knowledge, it would't be hard to end up with a car on top of you. We almost have to train harder for these things because we run into them so infrequently that we don't get that much practice.

How much more does that ring true for something like rope-rescues where we may not run into a serious one for a year or more at a time? A poorly constructed anchor or an improper knot could tip the balance of the incident away from heroic rescue and towards horrendous tragedy. Yet that's what could happen all too simply with a skill that we almost never have to use.

Think of something you maybe haven't done much of for a while. How about calculus? If you were woken up tonight at three in the morning and asked to find the derivative of a large polynomial, with someone's life riding on the line, how would you feel about your odds?

That's why I'm happy to do this kind of training as often as we can: because I don't want to doubt myself in the slightest when the time comes to use it.

It's also a great excuse to spend a weekend playing around with some pretty cool toys. :)

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Don't take yourself too seriously

We interrupt this normally deep and serious string of blog posts for an amusing anecdote:

I've been starting to help with the recruit class for the latest group of rookies. I got my instructor I certification recently, and I've been wanting to put it to use, so what better way than to volunteer to assist with recruit class in my free-time, right?

Well, the officer in charge paired me with my old instructor from back when I was in the rookie program to act as his assistant instructor for the day when we were teaching SCBA donning and emergency techniques. After watching the old man work with the first couple crews that came through the class, I got a chance to take over and show what I could do with my own group of recruits.

Trying to be as serious and authoritative as possible, I carefully went through the parts-and-components lecture, and orchestrated some practice donning the SCBAs. Great so far.

Preparing to go outside and start our confidence maze, I addressed the crew:

"Are you getting this? Everything making sense?"

Nods all around the room.

"Ok, gear up! We're going outside to do this for weal."

Blank stares, then smiles. Damn it. You can't sound tough when you replace an "R" with a "W".

There was my old instructor at the back of the room, doubled up and shoulders shaking in silent laughter.

"That was my encouraging voice, you won't hear it again", I said, trying to shake it off and recover gracefully.

Oh well, no sense in taking yourself TOO seriously.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

My new article on FireLink

To anyone who has interest, I've written a new article that's been accepted to FireLink.com for my "Day in the life of a Probie" column. Check it out at the link below:

http://firelink.monster.com/benefits/articles/10545-how-to-save-a-life

Thursday, February 18, 2010

The Big Day

Today is a big deal for me. Since January of 2009, I've been preparing for the day that I'd get my red helmet. Today I found out I passed my written EMT-B exam, which was the last item on my list of requirements to move out of my probationary stage.

In my department, the color of your helmet signifies your rank, and is what officers use when deciding who to give tasks to on scene.

Orange = Recruit Firefighter

This is what I had during recruit class. It means that you shouldn't even be on a scene, it's just for training gear. It's a big thing when you get to graduation and get to adorn it with the decal that gives you the next level.

Orange w/ Green Stripe = Probationary Firefighter

I've been wearing one of these for almost a year now. As a probie, you get to fight fire with the best of them, but the officers will be sure to keep somebody experienced with you to make sure you don't slip up and get someone hurt.

Red = Firefighter

Less is more, as is evidenced by the step up in recognition you have when you drop the "Recruit/Probationary" from in front of your title. In our department, this means that you have your firefighter I & II certifications, your haz-mat awareness & operations certifications, you've demonstrated competence on every apparatus in your station to your company officers, and finally (the milestone I reached today), you've fulfilled all the requirements to obtain your EMT-B license.

It's a long road, but looking back on it I can't believe how quickly it's gone. Maybe next month I'll take a step back and plan what I'm going to do next. For now, I'm going to relax and revel in the afterglow of another completed journey.