FARMINGTON – The call came over the radio. “I’m trying to find my way out. I’m lost again. I don’t know where I am in the basement.”
Fortunately the firefighters’ words were scripted and the smoke was generated by a fog machine. But the threat is real every time firefighters respond to a structure fire – that one of their own could be trapped or lost somewhere inside.
On Monday night, Farmington and Jay firefighters had a Rapid Intervention Team training at an empty house on Wilton Road. The two departments back each other up at structure fires with RIT.
“If we have a fire, Jay comes in for RIT,” Farmington Chief Terry Bell said. “If Jay has a fire, then we’ll respond for RIT for them.”
He added that Industry and Madison have a similar relationship as do Livermore Falls and Wilton.
A RIT team is a handful of firefighters that can often be seen standing around at a fire.
“Hopefully they don’t have to do anything,” Bell said. “They can put ladders up and things, but they can’t go in the building. If there’s a downed firefighter then they go in with five or six guys to find him.”
Using a rope to mark their way, RIT members will go into a burning building with an extra air pack in tow for the firefighter for whom they are looking. Often by the time they locate that firefighter, their own air is running low and a fresh RIT team is called in to bring the person out. The exertion of carrying a fellow firefighter causes a person to breathe heavier and faster, using up air quicker.
Locating and bringing out a lost or downed firefighter is a job for the younger men, says deputy fire Chief Clyde Ross, who has been a Farmington firefighter since 1971. But several older firefighters were present at the training, “so we can know what they’re up against and be supportive,” Ross said.
Lt. Tim Hardy, a certified instructor, led Monday’s training.
“We try to simulate this as close to real life as we can, but it’s still not the same,” he said. “With training, there’s not that level of anxiety. On a fire department, you’re pretty much family, and there’s a good chance, no matter what town we’re in that it’s a friend or a friend of someone you know. With that level of anxiety and stress, it’s a whole different thing.”
The firefighters participating Monday have already had RIT training but were honing their skills.
James Flanders, 21, hopes to become a RIT member, but he only joined the department in April and has not had the training. This time he served as the victim. He was hidden in the basement, which was filled with machine-made smoke. Alarms sounded as his air tank began to run low.
“If you’re claustrophobic, you don’t want to be a firefighter,” he said, adding that it was difficult to see his own hand in front of his face.
He was not sure if he was going to be found. “The whole team passed by me,” he said.
But the firefighters located him and used a ladder as a stretcher to pass him out the window.
It is rare that the fire department is able to have a house or other building to practice on, especially one that is still sound like that at 307 Wilton Road, Ross said. The firefighters took full advantage of it with RIT training on Monday, ventilation training Tuesday, and they will have a practice burn on Thursday.
“There’s no other way that we can get our people the training they need,” Hardy said of the house.
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