| Thursday evening July 16th at 1900hrs fifteen members attended a drill conducted by the fire line officers. Construction on a new housing development located off of Zebley Road in the township is slated to begin in the near future. The fire line officers received permission to utilize a house located on the property for training before the house is demolished.
Assistant Chief Brett Small (66-9B) led the drill which consisted of RIT (Rapid Intervention Team) operations, search and rescue, accountability and wall breaching. The first scenario included safely and rapidly breaching an interior wall to quickly locate a trapped firefighter. Members practiced striking, stripping, pushing and then breaking walls in order to be able to crawl thru to the other side. Considerations included electrical lines located in the walls and obstructions on the other side of walls (cabinets, furniture, people, etc.).
Junior members attending the drill were taught the basic right hand and left hand search techniques. The right handed and left handed search is a basic search technique used in single family homes utilizing the wall as a reference. A search is completed in two different operations the primary and secondary search. The primary search is the first and the more dangerous of the two since the primary serves as a quick but thorough attempt to locate any victims. This is done at times ahead of the hose lines and above the fire. The secondary search is normally performed after the fire is under control and is more thorough. More advanced search methods include orientation point searches, PASS device assisted searches and thermal imaging camera assisted searches.
Safety Officer Jim Smith conducted accountability requiring each member to hand over their accountability tag as they enter the building and retrieve the tag upon exiting the building. The final scenario of the evening entailed searching for two unaccounted for firefighters. Two crews of four split off quickly locating and safely removing the firefighters. The evening wrapped up around 2200hrs with members restoring the equipment and Chief Craig E. Small (66-9) reviewing the topics covered.
The company will have use of the house for a short period of time and will return to practice hose line advancement, ventilation and ground ladder placement. |
