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Thursday, September 2, 2010 |
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Firefighters hone skills at training session
Published October 13, 2009
When the Guadalupe County Firefighters Association started a certification training program for volunteer firefighters at its training field in McQueeney, a young Marion firefighter named Joseph Rodriguez was one of the students.
This past weekend, Marion Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Chief Joseph Rodriguez was one of the instructors, working Sunday in a steady rain to teach firefighters how to do their job — and return home safely at the end of the call.
“This station is designed so firefighters can learn the salvage and overhaul course objective,” Rodriguez said.
Students were required to assess the situation in a residential fire to determine whether they should enter the building and how they should do so.
Then, they were expected to secure and protect any valuables they could, determine whether the blaze had spread into the walls or ceiling and what to do about it.
“We have them make forcible entry,” Rodriguez said. “After that, they start salvage — make sure they protect that $6,000 antique table if they can — check for extension of the fire and begin mopping it up.”
At other stations, trainees were learning the basics of fire investigation and, in the burn house, how fire behaves and how to operate safely in an environment where temperatures can reach 1,000 degrees or more and the air is filled with poisonous gasses hot enough to sear the lungs — and deadly enough to kill.
The fire training facility is located off Lakeside Pass on land leased for the purpose from Canyon Regional Water Supply Corp. for $1 per year and has been used by local fire departments for training since 1992.
About four years ago, the fire association developed its local training regimen into a state-certified training academy to make it more convenient and less-expensive for local firefighters to get certified — and to raise money to help maintain the facility, which two years ago had to spend nearly $40,000 for improvements to its fire training “burn” house.
The State Firemen and Fire Marshals Association has in recent years revamped volunteer training so it can take place over four weekends — again improving the opportunity for unpaid local volunteers to become certified because they don’t have to go to College Station for a week-long program and absorb travel and housing costs.
The training conducted this past weekend and similar training two weekends ago were for 20 firefighters from around the state who needed to complete Phase III of four levels of basic firefighter training that is required by the state of all volunteers who seek basic certification. The training isn’t required, but the better trained a firefighter is, the safer that firefighter is, and volunteer departments with well-trained and certified volunteers reduce homeowners insurance rates.
There are three levels of volunteer certification in Texas — basic, intermediate and advanced — and the training takes about 600 hours in all. A volunteer who has completed the program can challenge the state’s certification for paid firefighters.
The training is conducted under the auspices if the Texas Emergency Extension Services out of College Station, known as TEEX, overseen by instructor Scott Matthews of New Braunfels, who will award state certifications to those who successfully complete the course.
Kingsbury Volunteer Fire Department Chief Bill Harborth and McQueeney Chief Tim Bogisch were conducting training in the burn house that consisted of two trips into the structure.
“We’re making two passes,” Harborth explained. The cool temperatures and damp weather moderated the training a little, he added.
“It’s not real bad,” Harborth said of conditions inside, where Bogisch was leading a crew through the training. “I don’t think it’s been over 500 degrees in there, and they’re all bunkered out.”
McQueeney Fire Capt. Ryan Blume, who is coordinator of the training program, pointed to safety enhancements added to the burn house in the renovations two years ago.
A new drop ceiling was put in, and electronic monitoring was added with leads to a control panel mounted on an exterior panel of the concrete block structure. Blume said state standards required that temperatures inside not exceed 800 degrees.
“We have to keep it under a certain temperature, and we monitor temperatures in every room,” Blume said. “Right now, they’re watching the phases a fire goes through, then we send them through a second time to put out the fire.”
A short distance away, Rodriguez worked with a group of young volunteers on command-and-control, as well as salvage and overhaul, explaining to the crew how to report their progress and observations over the radio to an Incident Commander who must make decisions based on those observations of conditions inside the building.
“This facility and this program is very important to us at the Marion Volunteer Fire Department and the other agencies here in Guadalupe County,” Rodriguez said. “Here, we can teach our people to become basic firefighters without the time and expense of having to go to College Station for a week. It saves us a lot of money and makes the program much more effective.”
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