Training days

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BROOKINGS – The Brookings Fire Department underwent two kinds of training this month on recently purchased city and county property: a cold smoke exercise and a firefighter survival training, Fire Chief Darrell Hartmann said.

The cold smoke exercise (above) uses a mineral oil-based material that simulates conditions firefighters might find in a dance party or theater production where there’s lots of smoke. The smoke isn’t a danger to firefighters but does obscure their vision.

“What we were doing on that was a structure search for a victim. It reinforces the entry crew to work as a cohesive unit, stay in contact, communicate with the incident commander, and then once the victim is found, proper egress of the team and the victim,” Hartmann said.

“It’s for the safety of those victims that are trapped,” Hartmann said. “If, and God forbid, we have somebody trapped in a fire, hopefully, this type of training just makes (rescue) that much faster.” 

Speed was of the essence in the firefighter survival training, below.

“What we’re trying to teach and reinforce with our firefighters is immediate egress out of a structure that’s on fire,” Hartmann said. “In today’s construction of homes, it’s usually light-weight material; the structure is full of synthetics from carpet to your couches, a little bit of everything. The fire gets hotter much faster.”

“Synthetics will turn back – once heated – to their base elements which is usually the prime-based material. It burns very hot, very fast and spreads very rapidly, which will take the fire conditions inside a structure to critical in no time. And the heavy black smoke coming off the fires are actually unburnt fuel, so that can light up at any time. Once you have the proper heat, a flame source – which is the fire – and enough oxygen, it will re-ignite,” Hartmann said. 

Firefighters used to have 12-15 minutes to get out of a structure fire; today with the synthetics and light-weight materials, “you have three to four minutes to get out of a structure,” Hartmann said.

Seconds can mean life or death, so if the crews monitoring the fire notice those conditions, “the firefighters may not have time to come out the way they entered the structure. So this is an emergency procedure only, but they need to understand how to do it properly so we don’t injure firefighters,” Hartmann said, adding that during training, the firefighters were hooked up to a safety line, which they would not have during an actual fire, so knowing the procedures and being able to execute them quickly are important.

“Training went well. Firefighters enjoyed it. Good training,” Hartmann said.

The training took place at the two structures purchased by the city and county to expand the parking lot at the Brookings City & County Government Center. 

“I’d like to thank them for allowing us to use that. It was great,” Hartmann said, adding the police department has used it for training, too, before the structures get torn down. 

He wasn’t sure when the buildings would be torn down, but said it wouldn’t be his crews doing it as part of a controlled burn. “We will not burn inside the city limits,” Hartmann said, due to close proximity of structures and the danger of fire spreading.