JAY – Firefighters here are now trained and equipped to do low angle rescues on steep embankments.

Like other firefighters around the region, they’ve also continued to add to their firefighting and rescue knowledge and skills.

Sixteen firefighters are certified to perform low angle rescues. The Fire Department saved over a two-year period to buy equipment that would help them reach victims who have gone over embankments in a motor vehicle, snowmobile or all-terrain vehicle.

Firefighters recently trained on a very hot day on a steep embankment behind the Jay-Niles Memorial Library in North Jay. Low angle equipment consists of a system of ropes, safety clips and pulleys and firefighters wear a full body harness.

The equipment would be used when a firefighter wouldn’t be able to walk down a grade on their own, said Capt. George Brown.

“We learned different ways to take the weight ratio,” said Jay Fire Rescue Training coordinator Gerry Pineau. After setting up the equipment, one firefighter would go down the steep grade to do initial patient care. Three others would follow with a Stokes basket to help transport the patient up the embankment. Firefighters set up a simulated rescue with each person taking turns being a rescuer and the victim to get the feel of how everything worked.

“Everybody could get the feel of the harness and Stokes,” Pineau said, “and the feeling of leaning back on the grade.”

The Stokes basket is clipped to the firefighters’ waists so the weight isn’t on their back.

This type of rescue is “very strenuous and very demanding,” Pineau said.

The equipment and harnesses cost about $5,000, he said.

North Jay firefighter Dick Cook was a “big asset” in buying the right equipment and training firefighters, Pineau said. Cook is a member of the Mead High Angle Rescue Team in Rumford.

In addition to rescue training, four firefighters completed an advanced firefighting course – Firefighter II – last month, put on by the Franklin County Fire Instructors Association. Brown, Mike Booker, Tim Toothaker and Leigh Mitchell took the nearly 140-hour course, not including travel or homework, on their own time.

Firefighter II training provides firefighters with the knowledge to be a team leader and to make leadership decisions, Pineau said.

Included in the course, Brown said, was training on incident management system, extrication, low angle rescue, rural water supply, fire suppression, thermal imaging and rapid intervention team. The latter is training on saving firefighters.

Of the 42-member roster of the department, 12 firefighters are trained as Firefighter I and 14 are trained at Firefighter II level. Four of the Hot Shot Team members will take Firefighter I at Foster Regional Applied Technology in Farmington in the fall, two firefighters are in the process of taking modules of FF I and another is going to academy to train in a 9-day course to become certified as Firefighter II.

The town of Jay pays for training courses that range on average of about $250 to $500, Pineau said, but the firefighters volunteer their time to get trained when taking a class to advance their skill levels.

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