Work Hard, Train Harder

Some people do training for their 8-5 jobs– maybe there’s new software to learn or a new position that affects the responsibilities of others.  The new information is taught and put into practice.

When it comes to fire department training, the list of possible scenarios to train on is endless.  Instead of one element evolving or being added, we are constantly trying to prepare for any type of call and continuously adding new, state-of-the-art equipment that needs to be learned.  We don’t just respond to fires and car accidents.  People call us when their carbon monoxide detector goes off, a plane crashes in their yard, a train turns over off the tracks, or a tractor rolls over.  The list could go on and on.  There’s no way to feel 100% confident through training to prepare for everything but we do train on a wide range of situations and are aware of all the resources we can call for incidents that are too large or involved for our lone department to handle.

And if we’re going to be expected to work hard on a call, we’ve got to train harder.

HPFD has training on something different every month.  Last week we trained on using foam as a fire suppressant.  Water is an almost idiot-proof way to extinguish flames, but foam actually does a better job at putting out fire and keeping it out.  But while water is idiot-proof, foam requires a list of variables to be at particular settings and create perfect harmony, which then creates foam.  And there’s some math involved… which is when I go into “nod-and-smile” mode.

We had a really cute instructor.  And I love his school spirit.

But he talked about math.  Yick.

Here our pumper is pumping water from a port-a-tank (a collapsible pool) through the hoselines being used to create foam.  We rely on port-a-tanks a lot because the countryside HPFD covers isn’t supplied with those handy things that stick out of the ground to provide water… oh yeah, fire hydrants!

To use foam, there needs to be people running the truck…

… people in charge of the concentrated foam…

… and people on the hoseline applying foam to flames.

While we had brush on fire, we decided to let some guys run the brush truck that might not have had the opportunity.  Our brush trucks are pickup-sized trucks with hundreds of gallons of water, a pump, and hoselines so they’re perfect for getting just about anywhere that a brush fire might pop up.  They’re also designed with nozzles on the bumper, which allows us to drive alongside a fire while extinguishing it.  The bumper nozzles are a big hit with kids watching us come through a parade (but don’t get their parents wet!).

That’s a full moon on the lefthand side.  Key the suspenseful music!  To the right is the light tower on our rescue truck that can pretty much light-up a football field.  It’s handy in the dark, and guess what– sometimes calls happen at night when it’s dark.

On to a new day and new training!  As a way to offer everyone on our department specialized agricultural training and invite guys from local departments to take advantage of it also, the Illinois Fire Service Institute (based in Champaign, aka God’s Country) came down to teach an 8-hour course on Agricultural Rescue.  Since we live in an area where combines and grain bins and “the back 40” are common, this training was very pertinent to training for unusual types of calls that we very well might encounter.

The course was designed to have classroom time with a slideshow presentation then move onto hands-on practicals.  It’s scary to prepare for farming accidents because it’s probably a really bad situation coupled with the fact that it’s probably going to involve someone who’s known very well throughout the whole fire department and the community.  But we’ve got to be prepared for anything and everything.

The hands-on portion took place at my parents’ farm.  Dad got to drag out all of his toys to use as examples for lots of people in the class who didn’t know what a chopper was, nonetheless know what the dangerous parts to one might be.  We had a silage wagon, chopper, blower, disk, combine, CAT, and auger to check out.

We did a walk-around of the farm to discuss the dangers of farm “stuff” that couldn’t be lined up in the field– such as the manure pit and silos.

The entire class split into 3 groups and rotated through stations.  Here, we had a scenario of a tractor-rollover with a person (in this case, a dummy) trapped underneath it.  An IFSI instructor talked us through different options of safely removing the tractor from the patient without causing the patient more harm.

At the next station, another IFSI instructor talked about injuries involving augers.  In the blink of an eye, an auger can grab an article of clothing or a hand and use its power to start pulling the person into it.  Unfortunately these types of accidents are far too common; sometimes people are lucky enough to just lose a finger or two, but sometimes the whole hand becomes hamburger and there’s not too much that can be done.

Dad took each group around to talk about each piece of equipment he had lined up.  It’s an advantage to have some knowledge of a piece of equipment and how it works before you have to figure out how to help a patient who might be stuck in it.

Good thing combines are so straight-forward.  Psssssshaw.

Which one of these is not like the others?

(A sneaky shot from under the corn head)

Shockingly, Max had a blast with all these strangers.  He provided water-break entertainment in a way only Max can.

Before the end of training, we did 2 more evolutions.  Here we used the Jaws of Life to “rescue” a patient who has become trapped in the corn head of a combine.  This is an example of an incident we hear of way too often in this area.

Finally we practiced a couple different ways to remove an unconscious patient from the cab of a combine.  Todd did a great job playing “unconscious” and everyone else did a great job of not dropping him. 

Which would’ve been kinda funny.

We train in the dark for the calls in the middle of the night.

We train in the hot sunshine for the calls in the heat of summer.

We train with special equipment for the calls we need to be able to use it seamlessly.

We train for the calls no one hopes to encounter.

We train hard so the calls seem easy.