Burning Down the House

Well, that was interesting.

Yesterday was a structure fire training course in Thomson, Georgia, an hour away. Five of us from our own Wolfskin VFD here in Oglethorpe County left at 6am and made the trip there without event. I very reluctantly elected not to take the camera, not knowing the various strategies, tactics, and situations involving this destructive Saturday, and I wish I had. It would have been doable. Many were the cell phones going off recording the events, and I don't have one of those little devices from hell, either.

Our Wolfskin contingent was certainly in the upper age cohort - late 40s and up - and hey, how about some of you younger folks!, but no less enthusiastic. Most of the couple dozen students were in their twenties, maybe a few thirty-year-olds. But they took good care of us, made us do everything, and spared us no disciplinary rod when we screwed up, which we did. We felt sort of like firefighting nobles, of some kind.

The two condemned houses were frame ca 1950s shotgun houses on the edge of Thomson, and part of the training was to prepare them during the morning. Ventilating, packing the demo rooms with wood pallets, knocking down porches. I was relieved that we weren't required to do any roof work - I am definitely NOT my best at heights even without a lot of gear on.

You'll recall that, as a result of support from our generous community, we have new PPE (protective clothing) and SCBA (breathing apparatus), and that itself took what we figured was 20 lb off the total carry weight of the old stuff, but with everything on still ran 25-30 lb. Just taking it on and off twenty times during the course of the day was valuable training - all that stuff really does need to be put on *perfectly* and many are the straps and knobs and zippers that have to be adjusted and turned. We ended up getting our tanks filled three times during the course of the day.

We had three major excursions into the buildings during set fires. We were divided into groups of four or five and stood as backup with another hose for the group going in before us. When it was our turn we all went in crawling on knees pulling the fire hose, and went to the fire. The head person knocked the fire down, we backed out on our knees, rotated the head person to the back, and then did it again until everyone had done it. Our knees are not thanking us this morning.

The first excursion was basically a (brief) classroom inside one of the rooms, where we kneeled and were told how things were going to be done. Then with 15 of us crowded into the room, breathing tank air, they lit the fire with a massive propane torch. I will have to say it was a new experience to watch the flames spreading rapidly throughout the room and advancing along the 7-foot ceiling. The instructor demonstrated correct use of the hose to knock the fire back, and then incorrect use, which produced a roomful of very hot steam and smoke, a whiteout. It was pretty amazing how hot things go even through the PPE.

The last two were the actual group sessions, and then it was time to let the house go completely. The second house followed early in the evening and was much more interesting with standup nozzles creating water curtains between the burning house and two nearby houses, and the power lines close by. The heat from that house at its peak was enough to drive us back 100 feet or more.

We were pretty lucky to have this particular training opportunity, which was arranged and organized very well indeed by the Thomson Fire Department, with observers and ICS staff from the Georgia Fire Academy, Georgia Forestry Commission and other various, sundry alphabetized agencies. Normal training at the Fire Academy involves a permanent "burn building" which just uses gas jets and stacked pallets in a burn-proof room, over and over.

There were two fire trucks stationed on the scene all day, with a bewildering array of hoses of all sizes we'd laid out in the morning, somehow. There was a rehab station at an ambulance staffed with EMTs. We had to have blood pressure and pulse rate taken before and after each excursion, and it was made clear that anyone who fell above a particular number would absolutely not participate. The rehab station was stocked with an apparently infinite supply of water and some gatorade-like substance. The attention to safety was amazing and was evident at each step, with the ICS support staff and instructors actually outnumbering the students. Peekholes with hoses had been carved out of the eaves of our training house, with ladders and hoses there to put out any fire that we were not able to handle. That's attention to safety.

In an environmental sense I suppose it's just not a good thing, although I imagine the likely alternatives of disposable would have been no better - landfill for the demolished house remains, for instance. We just got lucky.

And yes, I'm sore, and my knees hurt. But no burns! The other WVFD fellows are sore too, but we're all intact. Ours has always been a good, congenial group - I'm fond of the other four anyway, though we're quite different from each other. Normally I'm very chary of the bonding word, but there's no doubt that it applies here.

Very special thanks to our neighbors in the Wolfskin Community for supporting us. We couldn't do it without you.

-Wayne