All dressed up for a towering inferno
‘‘Hope you’re not allergic to peanuts.’’
I can hear the panic in my polite laugh.
Maybe I am allergic to peanuts? Maybe today is the day I swell up and suffocate in an allergic reaction to the peanut oil fumes they’re using for a supposedly harmless training exercise. I guess it wouldn’t be the worst way to go.
Stepping into a pair of steelcapped gumboots, a set of fireresistant pants pulled down over the top of them, I wonder if the smoke-engulfed building I am about to enter is really as riskfree as the firefighters tell me it is.
I tighten the straps on my suspenders, slip into the sleeves of my jacket and zip myself up nice and snug.
Possibly a little too snug – it’s verging on claustrophobic. I can already feel beads of sweat forming at the base of my back and I haven’t even touched the 17-kilogram oxygen tank I am yet to haul over my shoulders.
I recite the instructions like a mantra – stay low, stay close, sweep the walls and floor for any sign of life in the building, and you’ll be fine.
Kitted out and facing the front door, I rest the hose over my shoulder – potentially the last link I have to the outside world.
Sooner than I would have liked, I’m leading the way through an endless space of nothingness, smoke consuming my entire line of sight.
It’s a rare rescue training mission with Fire and Emergency New Zealand.
I’m inside a soon-to-be demolished Housing New Zealand property in the Lower Hutt suburb of Naenae.
The purpose of the exercise was to provide the firefighters with an emergency scenario which mimicked the conditions of a real-life rescue mission.
Hutt City senior station officer Logan Akers said the training was unique because firefighters don’t have many opportunities to refine their skills outside of an actual lifethreatening emergency.
‘‘It allows us to take hoses inside the house which we can’t do in normal training.
‘‘We’ve managed to smoke the house and put some patients inside there for search and rescue training. All of our crew here are our normal on-duty crew and as part of our normal day-to-day job we train as much as we can, just to keep our skills at the highest level,’’ Akers said.
Although my skills may not be up to the same standard, I did manage to heave a test dummy out of a two-storey building backwards, without choking on peanut fumes.
Once out into the safety of the open air, firefighter Yvette Potts applauded my efforts.
‘‘For somebody that’s never done it before, the most daunting part is actually getting dressed.’’
It’s a rare rescue training mission with Fire and Emergency NZ.