Not much time for a post today, so I'll just include some of my favorite pictures/captions from the past few days of instruction on how to rescue yourself and your crew. Sometimes, you just have to get the fuck out of a room or a building—and now we know how.
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Yep, pretty much just wrap the rope around your cylinder and yourself, and dive headfirst out the window. Thank God for friction.
Say you had to breach a wall and go into the adjacent room; could you fit yourself, your air cylinder, and the buddy who's out of air and breathing off your bottle? Yes, that's two people "buddy-breathing" off the same tank of air. And yes, that's a picnic bench and wall studs that we're crawling under—a pretty tight space.
The Columbus Drill; so named because of a situation in Columbus, OH where a rescue attempt on a firefighter who fell through a hole failed. Having learned from that, we're practicing a technique to lift an unconscious team member from below-grade.
Success.
Well, you've found a window that has a ladder placed at it; great. Unfortunately, it's too damn hot and you don't have nearly enough time to stand up and climb out. Best solution: dive out and do a ladder bail.
We felt like acrobats, weighed down in lead diving suits. It wasn't graceful, but swinging your body around in a circle and getting down that ladder doesn't have to be. Again, sometimes you just have to get out.
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It gets harder and harder to take pictures as the weeks go on; not only is this stuff very hands-on, but it's usually so fun that I don't remember or don't want to stop and take pictures. Additionally, it's not really a situation where I can carry the camera with me at all times (I'd have to buy a replacement every day).
We're all pretty banged up—as our instructors said we would be—but this is the kind of training that everyone in the class has been waiting for. We want to be firefighters, not accountants. Who in their right mind would want to sit in a classroom all day?
I'll try and do some more posting on Sunday, since this entry is a bit too picture-intensive for my taste. It's usually more fun for me to recount our adventures in writing, and let the reader's imagination do the work.
We start Engine Operations next week… some good stories should come out of that.
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