Learning how to save lives

Imagine you’re trying to find someone to save their life. But you can’t see, have full firefighting gear on and can only crawl through a maze of obstacles while relying on the sound of your partner’s voice for help.
That’s the scenario Morgan City firefighters were put in this week to prepare them for possible real-life situations.
Firefighters went through a training exercise in groups of two or three designed to prepare them for potential real life-saving missions. The scenario took place in the LSU Fire and Emergency Training Institute’s new training trailer.
The trailer rotates to be used by different fire departments for training, Assistant Chief John Price said.
The exercise was meant to get firefighters used to wearing their full-gear, including an air pack, while traveling through a confined area in the dark, said Daniel Clemons, adjunct instructor with LSUs Fire and Emergency Training Institute. Clemons is also a Morgan City firefighter.
“Because of the size, it’s restricting to where they have to physically crawl,” Clemons said.
Though there were no “victims” that participants had to retrieve in the scenario Clemons set up, these types of situations usually occur during search and rescue operations, Clemons said.
Firefighters had several obstacles they had to go around or move. At one spot, participants had to go through the rungs of a ladder and had to take their air pack off.
Capt. Mark Young said the course had “a little bit of everything” with stairs, simulated attic spaces, barriers and a bedroom.
Young, a firefighter for 24 years, said he has been involved in rescues similar to Wednesday’s training with a partially collapsed building.
“It’s not the idea that we’re doing this at a house fire,” Clemons said of the exercise. “It’s to get used to actually wearing the gear and knowing that if something happened ... in this confined area ... you try to get out and try to save yourself,” Clemons said.
In real-life fire scenarios, being able to maneuver through tight spaces with gear on can be the difference between life and death, Clemons said.
Operator Reed Stephens said not being able to see forces firefighters to rely on their other senses, including touch and verbal communication with their partner who accompanied them through the exercise.
“It makes you rely on your buddy, and your fellow firefighter,” Stephens said.
The hardest part of the exercise was having to remove his air pack to be able to get through one section of the course, Stephens said.
Young said he’s done some extremely challenging drills over the years. He participated in an exercise years ago of a simulated building collapse where firefighters had to cut through the back of a sofa to get to the other side, which took almost all the department’s personnel working together to accomplish.
Acting Operator Brandon Landry said the trailer was purposely designed “to have you pinned down so that way you don’t freak out in the real thing.”
Firefighter Ashton Gibson said the first two minutes of the course were the toughest because of “tight-fitting” obstacles, and communication with his partner was important. But, after that, the course wasn’t as difficult.
Another course Gibson went through at the firefighting academy was more challenging due to the smaller spaces he had to go through, he said. Patterson volunteer firefighters recently broke in LSU’s new training trailer as the first group to complete the training exercise, Clemons said.