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Youngstown fire training
The Vindicator ( Youngstown)
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Capt. Barry Finley of the Youngstown Fire Department speaks to members of the city and Liberty fire departments after completing Rapid Intervention Training at an abandoned building on Indianola Avenue on the city’s South Side. The training session Wednesday highlighted points in saving a firefighter trapped in a burning building.
The Vindicator ( Youngstown)
Photo
Terence Gamble waits to begin the training.
By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.
jgoodwin@vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
Smoke billowed from a South Side building Wednesday morning as teams of firefighters gathered outside preparing to enter.
The good news: No one was in any danger.
The event was part of a training exercise for city firefighters. The Rapid Intervention Training sessions focus on saving those firefighters who may find themselves in a life-threatening situation after going into a burning building in search of civilians.
Also participating in the training session were members of the Liberty Township Fire Department.
Frank Rosa, fire department battalion chief, said firefighters, who routinely risk their own safety going into a burning structure or building with weak framework, often need to be rescued. He said attempts at extracting the firefighter must be done in a planned and orderly fashion.
“This [exercise] covers what happens when one of our firefighters gets trapped in a structure fire. We get our Rapid Intervention Team together, and we go in. We are still working on extinguishing the fire, and we are still searching for civilians, but we also have to find that trapped firefighter,” Rosa said.
The battalion chief said the training helps to minimize fatalities involving firefighters and also helps prepare firefighters for situations that may not be life-threatening, but pose the risk of serious injury.
“In a city this size, our guys fall through floors, sometimes multiple levels of floors, so we have to be ready for these things,” he said.
Fire Chief John O’Neill Jr. called the training sessions some of the most important the department conducts.
“When you have a firefighter trapped, that is the most disorganized a scene can get, so the training keeps us organized. You have to have a baseline plan in place,” he said.
The training is made to look and sound as real as possible. Smoke poured from a vacant storefront building in the 1200 block of Indianola Avenue. Firefighters gathered outside the building preparing to make entry while listening to
radio traffic detailing the situation inside the building.
Within minutes, ladders were placed to second-story windows outside the building. Firefighters, with axes in hand, entered the building by knocking in the front door.
O’Neill said in-depth training for various rescue efforts are done on a monthly basis. He said the training sessions are a benefit to the community and no cost to the department.
“We always try to find old houses to use and stuff like that,” he said.
Rosa said use of the building had been granted by the city’s housing and demolition department. He said the building once housed a shoe store on the first floor with a residential apartment upstairs but had been vacant for years.
The city has eight fire stations with 10 companies of firefighters. Five of the 10 companies took part in the training exercise. Rosa said the remaining five companies will undergo similar training at a later date.