Last Wednesday a crew of five retained firefighters provided fire cover for Lowestoft – Red Watch had a day out in Sudbury for a Water Rescue exercise.

The town was in the ‘safe’ hands of Mel Buck, John Hubbard, Al Soards, Richard ‘Shambles’ Lambert and me.

We started off the day getting standard tests done on Ladder 2 and the PRT – weeklies, monthoes and quarterlies…

After tea-break Mel had lined up a couple of BA drills for us, ostensibly for us to get a BA wear in using the new helmets before we actually wear them at a job.

The first drill was just a simple moving in darkness wear following a guideline in the smoke house. The wear wasn’t demanding but it did give us the chance to don up, adjust the new helmets and get a feel for how they differ from the old Cromwells when crawling, climbing etc in BA.

The second drill was set to simulate us turning up at a job. We pulled up at a derelict building and were informed that there may be children inside as they were known to build dens in there.

When Mel and John did their 360 of the building they found a casualty hanging out of a first floor window. We did a confined pitch of the nine metre ladder and Shambles ‘rescued’ the casualty.

Then it was me and Shambles in BA to do search and rescue on the ground floor, with entry through one of the front windows. Shambles went as Number 1 carrying the branch, with me following carrying the door enforcer. I pulled in a good length of hose reel and then we set off following the left hand wall. Fairly quickly we made our way right around the ground floor, back to our entry point. We then had a message from BAECO that there was a den in the middle of the building that would need to be searched.

We retraced our steps until we found an opening into the den. There then followed a tight maze of the metal cage walls. Entry to a section was either through a doorway or a ‘window’ section. Having weaved our way through most of the maze we informed BAECO that we were at our turnround time and were making our way out.

I think my arms were a couple of inches longer after lugging the door enforcer round with me!

With the smoke cleared we took at look at the route we took. It always seem so much further when you’re shuffling along in thick smoke… And we’d been on a real twisting and turning route.

The new helmets with BA had worked well, so at least I know what to expect when we get a job.

And we wound down the day with some home fire safety checks, culminating in Al and Richard making the day of two old ladies – ‘Oh young man!’

– IAN CARTER (www.accessiblewebsites.co.uk)