The intense heat hits you like a wall, everything suddenly goes dark, the majority of your senses are taken away, or at least stifled immensely and your breathing accelerates, and that is only a minute or so into a rather simple controlled firefighting exercise on a chilly Sunday morning in early December.
Now imagine the same experiences times 10 in a tricky high-rise building fire on a sweltering 90-degree-plus day in August and it is not hard to grasp the intensity of the amazing work done by firefighters and paramedics.
Heading into the IAFF Local 4269 Ocean City Career Firefighter Paramedics Association’s Fire Ops 101 training exercise at the county’s fire training facility in Newark, I already had a profound respect for first responders.
As a reporter for many years, I have been on numerous fire and incident scenes, watching the firefighters do their thing from arm’s length and the safety behind a camera lens, but that respect was enhanced greatly after participating in Fire Ops 101 on Sunday with Delegate Mary Beth Carozza, Ocean City Councilmen Wayne Hartman, Tony DeLuca and Matt James, who is already a volunteer firefighter, Ocean City Risk Manager Eric Lagstrom and another colleague from the media.
After getting outfitted from head to toe in heavy, cumbersome gear and equipment, the participants received a little classroom training from IAFF 4269 members on what to expect and how to get used to the self-contained breathing apparatus that would soon be strapped to our backs. Simply getting into the gear was a challenge with the heavy pants and coat, steel shanked boots, gloves, hoods and helmets.
When precious seconds count, we were told firefighters get their turnout gear on in about 60 seconds, but for me, it felt more like 10 minutes or more to pull on the clumsy gear, or maybe it was just me and not the equipment that was clumsy.
Once outside and geared up, we got a first-hand look at the task before us. Trained firefighters rode into the fire training facility, a stark, four-story cinderblock building in Newark, quickly got off the truck, deployed a fire hose, went up the short flight of steps to the first floor and opened the door. Smoke poured out as the firefighters entered the building, quickly extinguished the blaze, in this case a big bale of straw, carried out a victim and secured the scene in a couple of minutes.
Simple, right? Well not exactly. Those firefighters had practiced that same drill hundreds of times, and many others far more complex, and handled the task with precision and aplomb, but the chore would prove to be more difficult for novices wearing the heavy gear and breathing through an oxygen mask from a tank on their backs likely for the first time. When asked if any of us had ever done anything like it before, I thought to myself how I did watch “Backdraft” the day before.
But here I was on a Sunday morning, when I would typically be taking in some NFL pre-game shows, getting ready to walk into a burning, smoke-filled building. I have to say I had a little apprehension, not for my safety as I was surrounded by career professionals, but more about how I would handle the controlled breathing from the oxygen tank and if my 6’5” frame could nimbly jump off the truck and run up the flight of stairs with what felt like 100 pounds or more of gear on my back.
However, with my team members — Lagstrom and Ocean City Today’s Kara Hallisey- we rolled in on the fire truck, got the hose off the truck and laid it out, bled the line to get a good jet of water and entered the burning building. Together, with the help of the professionals, we knocked down the fire and finally dragged out the heavy dummy, which we were told was not the heaviest they train with.
My apprehension about breathing through the mask proved to be warranted. Even before we went into the dark, smoke-filled building, my mask clouded up as I was told it would do, and my visibility in the bright Sunday morning sunshine was greatly diminished. Once inside, when the wall of smoke and heat hit me, my breathing accelerated and I felt like I could have been a stand-in for Darth Vader.
The entire sequence from jumping off the truck, getting into the smoke-filled building, putting out the fire and dragging out the victim took maybe five to 10 minutes, but it felt much longer. We were told during the classroom session 20 minutes of firefighting was akin to eight hours of hard labor and our brief experience left no doubt that sentiment is true.
By the time I peeled off the layers and guzzled a bottle of water, my already profound respect for firefighters, paramedics and first responders had been greatly enhanced. Thanks for the opportunity guys and thanks for all you do.