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thedrifter
03-13-06, 07:38 AM
Fire departments take advantage of Marine Corps training facility
Published Monday March 13 2006
By LORI YOUNT By LORI YOUNT
The Beaufort Gazette

New Lady's Island-St. Helena firefighters Beaton Branden and Pat Macloskie have never faced an actual burning house, but this week they prepared for their first fire by entering the smoky darkness of the burn building at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

"It's amazing how much you don't know what firefighters do," said Macloskie, who is almost 40 and beginning a new career. "We're always taking classes and training."

Fire departments from northern Beaufort County and the military bases ran drills, which they conduct quarterly, at the building all last week, mixing and matching their equipment and firefighters.

The training allows newcomers such as Macloskie and Branden to learn how to operate inside the closed doors of a burning building and veterans to sharpen new skills.

"It's a good place to make mistakes," Macloskie said. The two recent fire academy graduates and their captain agreed learning to communicate with other firefighters is the greatest challenge.

Because once inside the building, it's almost pitch dark. The firefighters are told to enter the building from the back upstairs door rather than the front since some know the house like the back of their hands but still need to practice feeling their way around the rooms, Burton Fire District Capt. Jim Still said.

The first group of three firefighters to enter, all from different departments, are supposed to enter quickly as possible and attack the fire. As soon as they enter, the temperature difference is noticeable, causing condensation on their masks that has to be routinely wiped away with a glove to even have a chance of seeing.

While dragging the burdensome hose with them, they snake around the walls of the house on their knees, groping for the stairwell. Once they find it, they turn themselves and almost 90 pounds of gear on their stomachs and head down feet first, one stair at a time.

Visibility increases as they reach the bottom of the stairs, lighted by the fire. A quick scan around the room produces no signs of victims, or in the case of training, dummies. Since all that is burning in the drill is wood and hay, the smoke is relatively light.

With their 40-pound suits, the heat only feels as uncomfortable as standing in close to a campfire for too long.

Now they must decide how to attack the blaze. Since it's a relatively small fire, they have a chance to practice different tactics inside the building.

"It's a lot more scientific than people think," Still said.

Once the attack team is inside, another team of three enters to start searching for victims. One piece of equipment that aids them is a thermal imaging camera, which detects and distinguishes infrared heat rays within a half-degree, which Still said helps mainly in rescue searches but also helps firefighters see inside a house and see hot spots in the ceilings and walls. It takes a two-man team five minutes to sweep a room without a camera and about a minute with it.

The cameras can cost up to $15,000 each, and Still said Burton has five of them, one for each engine. They were mostly bought with outside donations, he said.

The county government "will buy you $400,000 trucks, no problem, but they look at you funny when you ask for $15,000 for a camera."

While waiting for their turns outside the burn building, training officers teach firefighters more advanced techniques, such as the risky practice of vertical ventilation, in which they cut a hole in the roof of the house to let smoke and heat quickly escape the area where the other firefighters are working.

Working with different departments' firefighters and equipment can be an eye-opener.

"It lets you know what they're used to," Branden said. "You learn different techniques. There are so many different approaches."

Learning to work with other departments is increasingly important with mutual aid agreements and a rapidly growing county with little growth in personnel and budgets, Beaufort fire marshal Dan Byrne said.

"We operate more and more like one big department," he said.

Macloskie said he's more prepared for his first actual fires after an inside look at a fire and how more experienced firefighters handle it.

"How you react is how you train," he said.

jContact Lori Yount at 986-5531 or lyount@beaufortgazette.com.

To comment: beaufortgazette.com.

Ellie