What to do when seconds count?
Firefighters train in special tactics for rescuing their own
Through the piercing, intermittent screech of an alarm and the dense, smoky haze in the hall of the old yellow farm house, their commands and actions were a blur of urgent noise and frantic motion. In the blinding flash of a flickering strobe, however, it was possible to catch staccato glimpses of an emergency unfolding – a small knot of firefighters, bogged down in heavy turnout gear, struggling to drag a fallen comrade to safety.
Well, almost. The house was real – a real training facility, where firefighters were drilling routines for situations they hope to never face: saving themselves or another firefighter from the imploding inferno of a structure fire.
“We try to set it up as realistically as possible without heat and fire,” said Instructor Paul B. Trahon of P.L. Vulcan Fire Training Concepts. “The adrenaline level is diminished somewhat because they know it’s a drill.”
A group of Vulcan instructors came to the city this week to train some 200 firefighters from all over the Blackstone Valley, including the Woonsocket, Albion, Lime Rock, Smithfield, Nasonville and Central Falls fire departments, according to Woonsocket Fire Chief Paul Shatraw, but one firefighter came all the way from the New York City Fire Department to attend.
The two-day session was devoted to drilling in techtniques designed to train firefighters how to help themselves or other firefighters if they get suddenly get lost, trapped or incapacitated in a structure fire – a little known facet of the firefighting arts known as rapid intervention. Though the public may not generally be aware of it, every time a squad of firefighters assembles at the scene of a raging fire, in Woonsocket anyway, a small group – the Rapid Intervention Team – hangs back just in case something goes sideways for the front-line crew, according to Shatraw.
“They are there strictly for the safety of the firefighters who are fighting the fire,” he said.
What makes the city such a magnet for a regional training seminar is that it has the perfect classroom – a house that serves exclusively as the WFD’s training facility. Located at 79 Asylum St., the two-story dwelling, built 118 years ago, has an elaborate network of staircases, halls and rooms that make it an ideal setting to recreate the sorts of conditions firefighters might encounter in a real fire.
The city has owned the house for many years and once used it for staging recreational programs. More recently it had been leased to a private clinic for use as a longterm residential treatment center for recovering drug addicts, but the WFD took it over about three years ago.
Vulcan pushes the real-life envelope by filling up the fhouse with a chemically-intert fog that looks like smoke tand setting off a code-compliant fire alarm during the faux emergency – all of which means deafening, highpitched noise and flashing lights. Firefighters also don full turnout gear and breathing apparatus, adding more than a hundred pounds to their body weight – extra baggage that can make saving lives even more challenging when the heat and flames of a real fire are thrown into the mix.
“That’s all part of the scenario that would actually be happening if we had a fire in the building like that,” said Shatraw.
One curious guest at the training suited up in a Scott Air Pack for the occasion just to get a taste of what firefighters are up against.
“This is what it was like carrying my three kids at once,” said Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt as she hoisted the twin metal air tanks atop her shoulders like a backpack.
This was the latest in a series of regional trainings at the Asylum Street facility that were organized through the Greater Woonsocket Fire Chiefs Association, which includes half a dozen fire departments, including Blackstone and Bellingham in Massachusetts, according to Shatraw. Each of the member communities shares in the cost of the sessions – $250 per firefighter for the Rapid Intervention Training.
Three years ago, when the former Tri-Hab Inc. discontinued its residential recovery program at the Asylum Street house, Baldelli-Hunt said it was Shatraw’s idea to convert the dwelling into a training facility. In addition to authentically replicating the type of layout firefighters are likely to encounter in a real fire, the site also has plenty of parking and is conveniently located for other firefighters in the Blackstone Valley, the mayor said.
“It’s beneficial to us, otherwise the chief would have to take his people somewhere else to be trained,” said the mayor. “Woonsocket is the home base for that.”
Nasonville Fire Chief Joseph Bourquin said the only other facility where firefighters from his Burrillville-based department could drill as effectively would be the Rhode Island Fire Academy in Exeter.
“It’s quite a hike, especially when you’re coming from up here,” he said. “This is excellent. We’ve used it four or five times already for regional trainings.”
The easier it is for firefighters to have access to a facility like 79 Asylum St., the better it is for firefighter skill-building because there is no better teacher than repetition, say Trahon and Shatraw.
The whole idea of training is to get firefighters so accustomed to employing specific techniques that they don’t have to spend much time thinking about them when they’re on sensory overload in a real emergency.
“It’s all muscle memory,” says Shatraw. “The more you train the better you get and when you’re in an emergency situation you have to rely on that.”
Trahon says it’s not hard to tell when the lesson is sinking in. But training isn’t about becoming flawless; it’s about improving and staying ready.
“That little light bulb goes on and you know, they get it,” he says. “The best critique of the training evolution comes from the students. They know how they did, or what they need to do, to get it.”