A firefighter's job often requires entering a burning building.
This week, Duluth firefighters trained with new equipment designed to help them escape those buildings when things go terribly wrong.
One at a time, the firefighters practiced a bailout -- hooking a line attached to their breathing units to an anchor, climbing out a third-story window and rappelling down the side of a portable tower set up in the parking lot of Fire Station Two in Lincoln Park.
"When we are fighting fires we try to limit our risk," said Duluth Fire Department Training Chief Charles Smith. "But bad things can happen quickly."
And one of the worst things that can happen is for flames to cut off a firefighter's escape route. But the Duluth Fire Department's new bailout kits will give a firefighter trapped near a window a way out.
The lightweight kits (each weighs less than 5 pounds) consist of 50 feet of line with a hook at one end. A trapped firefighter would use the hook to secure the line to a solid object, then lower himself or herself to the ground, controlling the descent with a belay device included in the kit.
"This will get them down safely," Smith said. "There have been a number of firefighters injured by jumping from second-story windows."
The development of such bailout kits was spurred by a tragic New York City fire on Jan. 23, 2005, a day that became known as Black Sunday in the NYFD. In that fire, six firefighters were trapped by fire and illegal partitions inside a fourth-floor apartment. Two were killed and four seriously or critically injured in the 40-foot plunge from the burning building.
Today, New York state requires every firefighter to be equipped with a bailout kit, Smith said. Duluth's compact kits come as part of the bottled air systems each firefighter wears at a fire, meaning it always will be available.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency Assistance to Firefighters grant paid 80 percent of the $56,680 cost for the 52 bailout kits Duluth bought. Another FEMA grant helped the Cloquet Area Fire District buy the $226,000 mobile training tower Duluth used Wednesday. The 4 1/2-story tower lays flat on a trailer for transportation and swings up vertically for training.
"It's an extremely versatile unit; we have yet to find things it won't do," Cloquet Area Fire District Chief Kevin Schroeder said.
With walls, windows, railings, a roof, a standpipe and sprinkler system, the tower can be used by firefighters to practice bailouts, high-angle rescues, operating ground and aerial ladders, hand-line deployment and advancing hose, and victim removal.
"It allows us to do victim removal through second-, third- and even fourth-story windows," Schroeder said. "We found that there is a very large disconnect between reading about rescuing people through windows and actually doing it."
"It's being quite heavily used this fall," Schroeder said of the tower. "It is in Duluth this week. It was in Superior last week. It's been a fantastic tool for training, not only for us here, but for the surrounding districts that have used it."
Copyright 2012 - Duluth News Tribune
