Firefighters have to be in top physical condition to perform in the high stress situations the job calls for. But for five members of the Piedmont Fire Department, it's a whole new ballgame.
Capt. Scott Barringer, Lt. Mike Carlisle, engineer Alan Grace, and firefighters Justin McNulty and Jonathan Fitzpatrick have qualified for the World Championships of the Firefighter Combat Challenge, an annual event popularized by a decade of coverage by ESPN.
This year's event, a five-day affair featuring teams and firefighters from all over the United States and Canada, takes place Nov. 1-5 in Dearfield Beach, Fla, near Fort Lauderdale.
McNulty, an eight-year veteran firefighter who's been with the Piedmont Fire Department for nearly four years, qualified for this year's individual Combat Challenge as well. McNulty's interest in the sport sparked the rest of his teammates.
"It's just great," said Carlisle, a nine-year veteran of the Piedmont Fire Department. "We've had a lot of fun doing it and since we started with Justin we've all been bitten by the bug."
The Combat Challenge consists of a race made up of five different physical challenges. First, a firefighter must race to the top of a five-story tower carrying a 42-pound high-rise hose pack. Next, the competitor must hoist another, similar 42-pound roll of hose to the top of the tower. After racing back down the tower, the competitor must drive a 160-pound steel beam a distance of five feet with a 9-pound mallet, followed by the hose advance, which involves dragging a fire hose 75 feet through a slalom course, then opening the hose on a target. The final event is the victim rescue, which involves dragging a 175-pound "Rescue Randy" dummy 100 feet to the finish line.
As if that doesn't sound challenging enough, the competitors complete the entire event in full turnout gear, including an SCBA, or Self Contained Breathing Apparatus. The total weight of the gear is over 50 pounds.
Astoundingly, the top times in the world individual competition have crept below 90 seconds.
The team from Piedmont qualified for the Streamlight Relay event, which involves each member of the team completing a leg of the event in the fastest time possible. The only West Coast qualifying event of the year was held recently in Fremont, and featured 16 of the top West Coast squads.
The firefighters from Piedmont qualified with a time of 1:44 minutes, well below the 2 minute qualifying time.
What sets the Piedmont team apart is the fact that they're all from the same shift, meaning they work together on the job, week in and week out.
Most Combat Challenge teams are "dream teams" that are picked from often thousands of firefighters within a department or region. A team made up of one shift is virtually unheard of.
"What I like about doing it together with the whole shift is the fact that we're not trying to put together a dream team," said Barringer, who's been with the Piedmont Fire Department for 16 years. "It's the same five-seven guys that are on duty, running calls together. We're building teamwork and camaraderie and making ourselves better at doing the job together. To me that's much more important than winning the competition."
McNulty had been following the competition on television for several years, and upon transferring to Piedmont, discovered an opportunity to simulate the events at his new station.
"We have two of the essential pieces of equipment here at the station, the hitting force machine and the rescue dummy," McNulty said. "I'd been watching the competition on TV and I figured since we have two of the most crucial pieces of the competition, I might as well train the best I can and give it a try."
The rest of department helped McNulty set up a facsimile of a full training course.
"Once they helped me set it up, and then they saw me do it, they got curious to see how they would do," he said.
The department has since incorporated the Combat Challenge events into their regular physical training regiment.
"We, as a shift, have worked out pretty consistently and done a lot of job-related fitness," Barringer said. "Often times, we'll workout for an hour or so first then practice our events. You want to be in shape to do the job, and you want to do the job well, and this is something that gives you an opportunity to accomplish both."
McNulty has taken his interest to the next level, spending two of his off-days every month commuting to the Sacramento area where he trains with one of the top Combat teams in North America, Sacramento's Local 522, a team of elite competitors pooled from the Sacramento City, County, and Folsom firefighting divisions.
"It's all about trying to push the envelope," McNulty said. "I got absolutely addicted to it last year. I figured if I could train with these elite teams I could make it."
And that he did, putting in an individual run of 1:48 minutes at this year's qualifying event, despite slipping up just shy of the finish line. "It easily could have been 1:43," McNulty insists.
Perennial top Combat Challenge teams such as the Sacramento squad and Travis Air Force Base not only rely on a large pool of talent to draw from, they also rely on corporate sponsorship to provide training equipment and cover travel expenses. McNulty hopes to take his team to the next level and is hard at work trying to gain sponsorship, but his personal goals are first and foremost.
"My goal this year is to get under 1:40. Once you start talking about the 100-second and 90-second barriers, we're talking about the categories of elite firefighters," McNulty said. "It just seems scary that those guys can do it in those times, but it's been done. Those guys absolutely fly."
Distributed by the Associated Press
