Life-saving special skills in mock exercise
Crews stage hotel fire and rescue
Perthshire-based firefighters crews staged a training session with a difference recently.
Three Scottish Fire and Rescue Service crews - two from Blairgowrie and one from Alyth - took part in the exercise to practice using breathing apparatus, which is one of their core skills.
But this training exercise took place in the Angus Hotel in Blairgowrie, which was closed for refurbishment last week. The scenario the crews were faced with involved a mock fire in the building and three casualties.
The 22 firefighters were all assigned specific roles and responsibilities as they would be in a real incident, and carried out a methodical search of the hotel for the casualties, supervised by training instructors and observers from the service.
Blairgowrie watch manager Chris Smith said: “Perth and Kinross is a relatively safe place to live with the number of fires and related injuries at their lowest levels over recent years.
“However, safety remains an important issue for our communities with a wide range of risks being presented in our locality such as road traffic collisions and rescue from rivers, water, floodwater and height to name just some.”
The crews used breathing apparatus
He continued: “This session was part of our training programme in community buildings and incident command.
“It is a great experience for firefighting personnel.
“It helps with their continuous professional development, training them to a high standard and maintaining competence levels to ensure our and the public’s safety, should we ever be called to an incident like this, and it is fantastic to be able to do it locally.
“This is the first time we have done
The Angus Hotel was the venue for the exercise an exercise like this in the Angus Hotel and we would like to say a big thank you to the manager and to the Scott family for making this possible.
“The way our firefighters conducted themselves during this exercise was typical of the way they serve their local communities to ensure that east Perthshire is a safe place to live, work and visit.
“The crews all put in a great effort and they all performed to the usual high standard we would expect from members of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.”
The firefighters were drawn from two stations