Local firefighters learn new rescue techniques at Fire Training Institute

Hands-on fire and rescue training classes completed by a trio of Poplar Bluff firefighters may make a difference in saving lives.

Firefighters Eric Mierisch, Dustin Graves and Austin Armes recently attended the University of Missouri’s Fire Training Institute in Columbia.

Poplar Bluff Fire Chief Mike Moffitt said, “We are grateful the University of Missouri’s Fire Training Institute offers these hands-on fire and rescue training classes. There are very few opportunities for hands on training outside of our in-house training.

“As technology is constantly changing, we feel it is necessary to attend these classes,” Moffitt said. “We hope these guys can bring back new techniques and experiences they can share with the rest of the department. We try to send at least three men from our department to summer fire school and six to the winter session. I wish we could send more but its all our current manpower will allow.”

Graves explained, the school is “a great opportunity for firefighters to learn new ways of doing their jobs and to see how different departments work.”

While Armes said, “It’s great to be able to travel and train with guys on the two other shifts. Practicing skills that determine how fast and effective we are for emergency situations could be the difference between saving someone’s life or not. It’s important we get to continue learning new skills like we did this weekend.”

The fire crews were offered two different days for the training, Mierisch said. The first day was a search and rescue class and the second day was a forcible entry class.

In the search and rescue class, “we went over different techniques on dragging victims or ways to remove victims from a house and we also worked on the new techniques on removing down firemen,” Mierisch said.

Removing downed firefighters is considered a high angle rescue, which Mierisch explained means, “you set up a ladder above the window, and then you hook up a rope and pulley system off the ladder and it goes into the window, and you hook onto the fireman. You have somebody pulling the rope from on the outside of the building, pulling them closer to the window and out the window, and down to safety.”

In the search and rescue session, they learned different drags and similar techniques presented by one of the companies who had invented a new tool.

The tool gets integrated into the turnout gear and comes out the sleeve to help wrap around the feet or the arms of a victim to help keep from wearing out the rescuer’s grip.

“We worked using that tool with the downed firemen and when to use the same tool just putting it in different places on the SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus) and then we predominantly use the firemen for the rope in the pulley system,” Mierisch said.

The classes “are very, very important,” Mierisch said. “The forcible entry class wasn’t necessarily a new skill, but it gives us the opportunity to hone those skills to be better at our craft.”

The local fire crew participated in the “power hour, which was the last hour of the day,” Mierisch said. “They set up two different drills and it was nonstop...go, go, go, go, go... for an hour. So that was fun to challenge yourself and we were in a confined space in a smoke-filled building. You couldn’t see the guy in front of you. You had to force the door once you get to the door. That was very rewarding once get through that one.”

The local crew was part of 25 in the search and rescue and 15 in the forcible entry class.

Predominantly, the firefighters were from the Kansas City and St. Louis areas. There also were firefighters from the Pacific area and one from Marshfield.