being a retained FireFighter in Suffolk
RTC drill with car upside down
I must be keen…
Saturday morning and I’m over at the fire station with two of my retained firefighter colleagues, taking part in an RTC drill.
Green Watch with Mel in charge had got a fairly elaborate scenario set up and it really needed a few extra bods to make it work.
The scenario was that the smoke house was actually a multi-storey car park and our car had come over the edge, landing on its roof in 6 foot high bushes. Where are all the neatly trimmed bushes when you need them?
The car had two casualties, both still held in by their seatbelts.
We made our equipment dump and, when looking at it afterwards, it looked like we had completely emptied the ERT of all its kit!
By splitting into pairs we started to dismantle the car. The hatchback came off first simply by stripping the trim and undoing a couple of nuts. It was now that the child casualty took a turn for the worse and had to be removed immediately on a longboard.
On the other side of the car, in the space created in the thick bush, both doors were removed, including the B post to give maximum space to get at the remaining casualty.
And, after a bit more space creation we were ready to get our big casualty on to the longboard, strapped on and then out through the side of the car.
That was it, job done.
It was a good drill, giving us the opportunity to use a wide range of kit that’s carried on the ERT. Rightly or wrongly, depending possibly on the rank you hold, the one piece of kit that is so obviously missing is a set of StabFast. The thinking is that the ERT will always have other appliances with it and they will have at least one set of StabFast. However, when the ERT arrives on scene first the quick deployment of StabFast could make all the difference in the minutes before the next appliance turns up.
Anyway, I digress…
Sad thing is that, just as we are getting acquainted with the ERT and its capabilities, we’ll be waving goodbye to it in two months time when it disappears to the new Lowestoft South fire station. We then revert to a tin opener and a large hammer!
Bitter and twisted? Me? Never!
– IAN CARTER (www.accessiblewebsites.co.uk)
