FORT DRUM, N.Y. - Time is tight in a rescue operation, and sometimes, so are the spaces. Fort Drum Fire and Emergency Services personnel concluded a 10-day training course on confined space rescue operations at Fire Station #2 on Friday.
Confined spaces are small, uninhabitable areas where people are not meant to be, unless by accident. That's when firefighters are called to the scene. Assistant Fire Chief Matt Woodward pointed out the manhole covers outside his office window on Ontario Street and the facility next door as examples.
"That cogeneration plant out there is huge and any of the extrusions you see, like that one tunnel that goes from the ground up to the top, is a confined space," Woodward said. "Within the structure itself there are many boilers and tanks we would have to get into if something would happen to someone in there."
The training included the core basics of loading ropes, compound systems, confined space awareness and entry techniques. Firefighters practiced air monitoring, donning the required personal protective equipment and assessing, packaging and removing the casualty.
Woodward said this involved about 30 hours of lecture and the rest was entirely hands-on.
"It's very labor-intensive and realistic," Woodward said. "You know, nobody calls us when they're having a good day. Everybody calls during a bad time in their lives. We try to recreate that when we do this training and so to make it that realistic becomes labor-intensive for the folks in there.
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Emergencies can happen in all sorts of weather conditions and so can the training, as evident when the 29 firefighters assigned to this course were inundated by an unexpected snowstorm Thursday afternoon while at the FES Training Center near Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield.
Firefighters rotated between horizontal and vertical rescues where a team of two would maneuver through a tunnel to reach the casualty. Another team descended into the tunnel from above to secure and hoist another casualty out. Others provided rigging, ventilation and air monitoring support.
"It is a very challenging course," Woodward said. "Confined spaces are not something people really want to go into, so it's building self-confidence within the organization and also knowing what levels of capabilities the other firefighters have as far as response."
A confined space rescue is considered to be one of the more challenging and dangerous operations in the profession.
"Potentially, if it's done incorrectly, the rescuer could become the rescuee and a victim themselves," Woodward said. "We're testing for acid bases and what the explosive limits are because a confined space entry could actually turn into a hazmat after the rescue is over. You're going into the unknown, basically, and the potential is there for people to get into trouble."
Crawling through cold, standing water and managing wet equipment with numb fingers added a level of discomfort that Capt. Tim Mulvaney said is par for this region and proved beneficial.
"If you were to go down to the south, the four seasons there consist of fall and three summers, where we have three winters and a fall … and so we have all these weather challenges," he said. "Actually, this weather was good, because if we had this training in the summer we wouldn't have had the experience of a winter rescue operation."
Mulvaney, who has been a Fort Drum firefighter for 24 years, said everyone brings different work experience to the training.
"It's rigorous, but it applies to our job each and every day," he said. "We're better prepared because of it and I'm confident we're going to do the job, 150 percent."
Another module required firefighters to establish a landing zone for evacuation and perform a grid search in an active shooter-based scenario. This is like a standard police call for Soldiers, where they had to organize a search party for key items like a pistol and ammunition casings.
Some basics of rope rescue training were covered during this course as firefighters prepare to practice rappelling operations in April. FES training is constant, and Woodward said it's designed that way to maintain their proficiency. A monthly schedule could include a dozen different events like emergency medical training, structural firefighting, aircraft rescue and vehicle extrication.
"We are required to do, bare minimum, 120 hours a year on certain topics," Woodward said. "We are way beyond that. We average 240 hours a year per person on either state-level or DOD-level required training."
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