- PREVENTION WEEK

Heroes in
training

ABANDONED RAIL cars;

hazardous waste drums;

dismembered automobiles; a smoke-stained concrete house.
Is it a movie set for a B-grade thriller? Guess again — it’s
the back yard of the North Vancouver District firefighters’

training centre.

It’s here, on St. Denis Road
near the Second Narrows Bridge,
that firefighters learn and upgrade
their craft. Under the direction of
Chief Training Officer Bruce
Ramsay, they jump off a 60-foot
tower and rappel down the wall
with their ropes important
training for the inevitable ‘‘can-
yon calls’’ that see emergency
vehicles roaring to Lynn Canyon
Park, loaded with rescue workers
set to risk their lives and limbs to
bring a hiker or diver back to
safety.

Here, too, firefighters practice
off-loading ‘‘hazardous’’ materials
from rail cars, sealing rail car
leaks and extracting victims from
wrecked cars. :

For a new firefighter, however,
perhaps the most overwhelming
experience is to be in the two-
storey concrete house that’s par-
tially filled with old furniture.

The house is filled with smoke,
a fire is lit in an oil drum to lend
heat to the situation — over 1000
degrees Farenheit — and, equip-

By Peggy Trendell-Whittaker
News Reporter

ped with their self-contained
breathing apparatus, firefighters
enter the home with the task of
rescuing an adult-sized dummy
hidden in one of the rooms.

It’s not an enviable mission,
considering the furniture is moved
regularly, the heat is oppressive
and the smoke is such that you
literally can’t see your hand in
front of your face.

“It’s all done by touch,’’ says
Ramsay. ‘“‘You have to learn to
get around without your primary
sense, your vision.’’

He points out some of the tricks
of the trade. It becomes second
nature to count the number of
stairs firefighters climb when they
explore a house — that way, they
can approximate how far they are
from the ground in case they have
to decide whether or not to jump
from a window.

Firefighters also learn to size up

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FIREFIGHTER KEITH Burdett battles a diesel fire at the m

training centre.

a home on first glance, much as
Sherlock Holmes did. Frosted
glass tips them off to the location
of a bathroom; air vents point
them to the laundry room. Within
seconds they will have noted the
types of windows and roof they
have to work with in finding and

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‘

controlling the fire.

Occasionally the department
will have the opportunity to burn
a real home down.

“‘There’s no experience like it in
the world,’’ acknowledges Ram-
say. ‘‘That’s the most valuable
experience we can give to our
guys. You can’t buy that kind of
training — you can’t simulate a
house fire.”’

Although he says they’re not in
the demolition business, he’s
always open to hearing from peo-
ple who have houses they don’t
want anymore. If various criteria
are met, the house will be burned,
room by room, allowing novice
firefighters experience in searching
houses, seeking out and attacking
fires and learning how to control
thermal balance through ventila-
tion.

Inside the training centre,
firemen learn how to run a hose
up flights of stairs to the top of
the tower — simulating their ac-
tions in the event of a highrise fire

Fire stats

FIFTY-EIGHT persons died in
fires in British Columbia in 1989,
one fewer than in 1988. Many
other fire statistics also showed
improvements.

B.C. Fire Commissioner Rick
Dumala reports 7,280 fires occur-
ted in the province in 1989, down
from 7,499 in the previous year.

Some statistics worsened. The
number of persons injured in fires
in 1989 was 387, compared with
the previous year’s 380. Largely
because of a multimillion-dollar
mill fire in Delta, the total dollar
cost of fire losses in B.C. exceed-

OCTOBER 7-13, 1990

ra) a
NEWS photo Mike Waketieid

ulti-faceted North Vancouver District

— memorize a multitude of knots,
maps of the district, fire chemistry
and the functions of the different
alarms and smoke detectors.

Ramsay says that the
firefighters constantly upgrade
their skills, and each is assigned
one activity per month, be it a
hose drill, room search or perhaps
an exercise with the self-contained
breathing apparatus.

The building is also used occa- °
sionally by outside agencies
mounting safety and first-aid
courses.

As Chief Trainmg Officer,
Ramsay is also responsible for in-
vestigating new methods and pro-
ducts, redeveloping standard pro-
cedures, staff skill level monitor-
ing and instituting training courses
for officer development.

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improve

ed $181
$119.6 million in 1988, and the
per capita loss per fire was $59.75,

million compared with

compared with $39.75 the year
before.

The number of fires per 1,000
population was a 2.38, down from

2.49 in 1988.

Of the 58 fire deaths — the se-
cond lowest number in B.C. in the
last 10 years — 32 of the victims
were men, 13 were women and 13
were children. Thirty-four of the
fire fatalities involved persons
over 60 years of age.

PARTNERS IN
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WORKING

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