April 05, 2007

Don't Call If Your Cat is in a Tree

Forget those cartoon firefighters who rescue cats out of trees. As a rule, they don't do it. "When a cat gets hungry, it will come down on its own," we are told by our instructors as the Jefferson County Media Fire Academy continues. Feline independence notwithstanding, firefighters do a lot more than just fight fires.

Almost any non-crime emergency is going to fall in the lap of a fire department: fallen trees, car wrecks, hazardous materials situations, people trapped in a variety of places... nearly anyone in need of help.

Middletown Division Chief Dave Thompson instructed our class how to respond to a car accident. He first showed us the tremendous force behind the deployment of an air bag. Even though we knew it was coming, the explosion startled us, even inducing a yelp out of one of my fellow journalists, who shall remain unnamed.

If any injuries are suspected and if victims need to be helped out of a crashed vehicle, the first thing firefighters do is prop the car up on "chalks," wooden blocks next to each tire that keep the car from moving, and that movement from causing further injury or pain to the occupants of a vehicle.

Thompson says if getting out of a car can cause more pain or injury, the car is removed away from the victim. That's where hydraulic tools come in. You often hear the "Jaws of Life," but that is only one brand nickname. In actuality, these tools can cut, pull apart, crunch and manipulate a car frame so it is out of the way for ambulance crews.

My turn with the "jaws" was nowhere near as easy as I imagined. The tool weighs more than fifty pounds, so lifting it into a vertical position to get a good angle at the top of a car door was difficult and cumbersome. You open or close these giant pliers with a handle skin to a motorcycle accelerator. It takes me a good ten minutes, but I finally succeed with a huge pop and the car door flying off.

A few random notes:

Getting someone out of a piece of machinery (including cars) is called an "extrication." If someone is trapped in a structure, building or trench, getting them out is a "rescue."

Firefighters do not wear "oxygen tanks," they use air canisters with the same proportion of oxygen in normal air, 21 percent.

Each firefighter goes through about 100 hours of training every year. Like the military, the fire profession believes that such training makes decisions automatic and instinctual when under duress, "in the line of fire."

Posted by joe.arnold at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2007

Where There's Smoke.....

Where there is smoke, there is fire. That's understood. But, what you might not realize is, more often than not, it's the smoke and not the fire that kills you.

These aren't just tidbits or trivia for firefighters, these are words to literally live by. More than 80 percent of the people who die in fires die from smoke inhalation. Hence, the need for firefighters to ALWAYS have SCBA as part of their PPE (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus as part of their Personal Protective Equipment).

Safety and Accountability are being drummed into our heads in the Jefferson County Media Fire Academy. We five media members must go through 20 hours of training before we are allowed to participate in real fire exercises. Our classes are at the Highview Fire Department on Fegenbush Lane; all of the firefighters here have been immensely helpful and seem genuinely interested in helping us better understand what they do so we can cover their work more accurately.

Assistant Chief Dave Goldsmith is coordinating the Academy. What I really appreciate about this program is that they are not trying to put on a "show" for us with bells and whistles and flames. Instead, we are being treated like firefighters and are expected to learn the essentials of this profession.

Dave quizzes us on some important numbers: what temperature will water turn to steam? (212 degrees), one gallon of water = 1700 cubic feet of steam, what temperature will carbon monoxide ignite? (1128 degrees). Why are these numbers important? It could be the difference between life and death for a firefighter.

Too much steam can bring oppressive heat upon firefighters. And, when carbon monoxide ignites, the smoke is aflame. It's called a flashover and it has killed firefighters in Jefferson County. Before our training is done, we will experience a flashover first hand inside the flashover trainer of the Jefferson County fire service.

Posted by joe.arnold at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2007

Fired Up!

I have covered some of the worst fires in recent years, particularly the Zane Street Warehouse fire, the Bardstown fire which killed ten people and the North Vernon, Indiana fire which killed four generations of one family. But the majority of fires I have covered had far more succesful outcomes. Firefighting is both a celebrated and underappreciated profession. So, when I was invited behind the scenes with Jefferson County firefighters, I jumped in to see how they really do what they do.

The Jefferson County Media Fire Academy is a taste of what recruits go through to become firefighters. What would take 40 weeks for them is being condensed into just three days for me. By the time it's over, I will have experienced a "flashover" fire in a training facility and crawled into a burning structure to see what that is like, too.

The first question a TV producer will ask a photographer covering a fire is, "IAre there any flames?" In other words, how big, how newsworthy of a fire is it? The good news for local residents is that most times the firefighters don't give us too much of a chance to shoot video of flames because they are so effective in getting fires under control.

I will be sure to bring you flames when my fire experience airs on WHAS11 News, but I also need to convey a sense of how much classroom time and education goes into training. On Day 1 of our training, about seven of our nine hours was spent on education: fire prevention, safety and accountability, helicopter scene safety, incident management with national guidelines post 9-11, and our PPE's, or personal protective equipment.

Most enlightening is the military approach to firefighting and the need for an Incident Commander with a command staff to coordinate each effort. You might think of firefighters as a bunch of gung-ho guys who can't wait to run into a burning building. But, I am learning that a professional firefighter approaches his job as a science, with deliberate decisions to ensure safety.

Stay tuned.. as I try to get my PPE on (including breathing appartus) in under two minutes!