Fire School - Consumption Test

Consumption test day is usually a long drawn out day. Given that I've attended the last 4 or 5 of these, I decided to make sure I was comfortable while watching the students do their thing.

We setup for the day, lined the students up, broke them into groups and began the fun.

I did make sure that I brought an ambulance out and parked it nearby - as a reminder that every year *someone* goes to the hospital on this day (usually for dehydration because they're retarded and ignore our advice about not going out drinking the night before, but it's more dramatic to make it look like the Consumption Test is Evil).

The Consumption Test begins.

My job was to take the students who had just completed the Tire Drag, and have them do 20x (yes, only 20) chops with an axe. Not the most stimulating of jobs, but thankfully I had my Comfy Chair and Cooler With Ice and Cold Drinks.

Much to my surprise, I did get to Make A Difference with a lot of the students. I'll explain.

When you exert yourself, are wearing 60-80lbs of structural firefighting gear, and are breathing through an SCBA, you tend to get a bit winded. Most of the students who arrived to my station were breathing very very rapidly. Of course, this type of breathing doesn't really give your body time to do it's magical gas exchange and get the oxygen you need in and the waste you need out, out (hyperventilation).

I took it upon myself to spend a moment prior to chopping to work on the breathing techniques. The idea was to get the students to focus on breathing in and out while counting to 5. 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out. This is a modification of a technique I learned cave diving that enabled me to minimize my air consumption rates (0.25 cubic feet per minute with moderate activity).

Anyway, this seemed to prove beneficial to many of the students.

Then came one of the students who was starting to panic. He claimed (quite obviously and accurately) that he was claustrophobic and that he wanted to remove his mask. He was very near total panic and become more irrational as the seconds ticked past.

Happily, we (the student and I) were able to regain his focus, using a combination of breathing techniques and Jedi Mind Tricks, and help him push past his phobia and he continued with the rest of his tasks. That made me feel pretty good inside.

The rest of the day passed almost without incident, until the very end.

Near the end of the day, it became obvious that one of the students was somewhat overheated and dehydrated. As the class was dismissed, I noticed that said student was in the hands of one of the Holy Triumvirate, one who is known for his disdain to all things EMS.

Apparently the HT was suggesting to the student (who was in somewhat of an altered level of consciousness, dizzy and had stopped sweating), that all he needed was a cool shower to fix him because "that how we did it back in highschool football", (keep in mind this would be in the 60s).

So I asked one of the other instructors to get the Lead Instructor, and bring the ambulance to us. Meanwhile, I attempted to cool the student with towels soaked in ice water draped around his neck and had him place his hand and arms in coolers full of ice water (this helps cool the blood and thus lower the temperature from the inside).

When the ambulance came, we put the student onboard, grabbed one of the medics from the training center and took our boy to the hospital.

Phew, that was close. I can only imagine the medical and legal fallout if the HT had his way...

Thank god for 18 yr old Talisker.