Fire School - Search and Rescue Training

Monday night we had Search and Rescue training. We had enough instructors that we split the class in two, and each team of students (there are 8) got to work with 1 instructor. Normally it's two teams per instructor, so this was a good thing.

I found myself in the 'apartment side' of the burn building - the object was to work on search and rescue techniques for smaller areas, we had another instructor doing wide area, a pair doing another closed area (in the house side) and someone else outside supposedly teaching lifts, drags and carries. This setup was mirrored at the 'highbays' (a facility that is tall enough to house an extended aerial apparatus, yet also has an elevator shaft, and more rooms of an apartment / housing type).

Overall, the students did well with the basic concepts - sounding the floor, keep checking for entanglement hazards and doing the actual search with appropriate communication. I believe that at some point they all 'died' by not doing the basic survival steps (floor/entanglement). But as it was their first night, no biggie. The public humiliation will start in a couple of weeks if they are still doing dumb things that can/will get them killed.

I found myself doing something I really really hate: talking longer than the actual doing during a practical session. I'm of the opinion the lecture is for talking, the practical is for doing. Simple right?

Well there were a few key points I felt it important that the students think about.

1) how to size up a structure to know where the victims are likely to be (i.e. we most run at night, so how to tell where bedrooms, living room and bathrooms are from a glance at the building from the outside before you go in)
2) using that information to better decide where to search
3) proper radio traffic for doing primary/secondary searches, as well as what to say should you find a victim
4) what do to when you do find a victim
5) what's the best way to extricate a victim? Through the main door? Balcony? Defenestration?

While I'm sure it went over the heads of most of the students, I did get some feedback from one of them I ran into last night at my station. He said that when driving down the street, he is looking at buildings in a new way - trying to visualize their layout just by looking at the outside.

That made it all worth it.

Ironically I'm meeting the same student today as I want to drive around my first due with a pre-plan book looking at some target hazards and new construction. I've been been in this part of the county 6 months, so I need to get to know it better still.

Hopefully we'll both learn something today.