CENTERBURG — Firefighters from Hartford, Delaware, Mount Vernon and the Central Ohio Joint Fire District participated in a search and rescue training exercise on Saturday. The owners of a large farmhouse in Centerburg gave the Central Ohio Joint Fire District access to the empty residence because it is set to be taken down. It will be burned in March in another training exercise by the COJFD.
Teamwork, cooperation and communication were the key themes of the exercise. The firefighters used paper to darken their face masks to simulate the lack of visibility in a smoky fire. Divided into teams, three instructors led them through different scenarios to familiarize them with the challenges of finding and rescuing victims in a fire.
Mount Vernon Assistant Chief Chris Menapace, COJFD Lt. Dave Miller and Westerville Lt. Mike Ullom, who also volunteers with the Hartford Fire Department, all stressed safety, communication and the importance of working together.
Menapace first talked about radio communication, which he said is vital in any fire situation. Finding the appropriate channel, and using the radio properly are basic skills that, if done incorrectly, can endanger the firefighter and the others around him.
“The whole day stems around these radios,” Menapace told the firefighters before the exercises began.
The MVFD members who participated made up the rapid intervention crew, the crew that responded when a firefighter simulated a Mayday, firefighter down, snare.
When a Mayday was called over the radio by one of the other teams, the MVFD firefighters responded with a specially designed air system called a RIT (Rapid Intervention Team) Pak. The RIT-Pak has connections on its tank that can be connected to a downed firefighter’s breathing apparatus if his or her tank has failed or is empty.
Firefighters practiced carrying an injured firefighter out of a fire. The instructors gave encouragement as the team carried the firefighter out of the building, unable to see because of their blacked-out masks.
Miller led teams through a downstairs search and rescue scenario. Weighted, life-size dummies were hidden throughout the house, and the teams took turns searching the house by crawling on the floor and using tools to extend their reach to search the entire room without seeing it. Firefighters had to hang onto each other to avoid being lost.
Once the dummy was found, they then had to find their way out, carrying the dummy.
Ullom led teams up a ladder into a second-story window to search upstairs bedrooms. Yelling encouragement and instructions, Ullom had the teams work as fast as they could, so that a team of two firefighters could climb the ladder and search an entire room in seconds. The teams climbed in, “sounded” the floor, meaning they check the floor to make sure it can hold their weight, then crawled while holding onto each other and using tools out in front of them to search.
Team members had to shout through their blacked-out face masks to each other, whenever they felt a door or a window.
Teams from Delaware, Hartford, COJFD and MVFD, worked together, as they would in a mutual aid situation.
COJFD firefighter and paramedic Joe Herren is a Centerburg native. New to firefighting, having started in July, he said he found the cooperation between the departments to be informational.
“It’s nice to work with the other fire departments, getting on the same page with everybody,” Herren said. “It’s nice to get to know everybody and see how they work.”
Firefighter Stephen Burger has volunteered for COJFD since September, and obtained his state firefighter card in January.
“I learned how to communicate better,” Burger said. “I need to talk louder. And the oriented man search and rescue, where one man stays at the door and the rest goes in, that was great.”
Miller said it was good for the veteran firefighters to practice skills they learned in their initial training.
“We’ve had a lot of good search and rescue training today,” Miller said. “We learned all this in school, and it’s a good way to refresh our skills as a good review.”
COJFD Chief Joe Porter agreed.
“What’s nice about doing this kind of training session, is the guys can go through and learn new ways of doing things,” he said.
“I was impressed with the training,” said Menapace. “Communication went very well. I was able to communicate with all the different departments, and our radios were compatible.”
He said the firefighters, especially the newer ones, learned a lot.
“They were very open to constructive criticism, an they were eager to listen to some of the older guys, and learn some of their tricks of the trade,” he said.
To create realistic conditions, instructors pounded on floors and used boards banging together to simulate background noise during a fire, while firefighters tried to communicate with each other.
“It’s very important to train as we fight, and fight as we train,” Menapace said, quoting an old firefighter adage. “That means when we train we like to make it as real as possible.”
