Crawling Through Small Spaces

A nourishing meal was served up by our training officers last night at WVFD training. The wall of torture, constructed by our resident carpentry genius, was brought out and cobbled back together, and we were all forced to crawl through tiny holes with full PPE and breathing apparatus.

I'm afraid I didn't bring my camera, and I'm really sorry about that because we put on quite a show. But I do have these photos stored away from the end of March 2007, when WVFD put on a damn-good two-month Mod 1 training course for a dozen new firefighters in Oglethorpe County. That's when this construction first made its appearance. As you can see, the openings are pretty small, and it looks like this firefighter might have a wee bit of trouble fitting that BA through:



But that's what you have to do, and probably you aren't going to be doing it in a bright sunny day with plenty of fresh air. You might even be following, with gloved hands, a hose that points the way to safety, with oven-cleaning heat just a few feet above your head:



Our newest firefighters, Gabe and Brian, floored me with how quickly they picked up on familiarity with the SCBAs, the straps, the alarms, putting the BAs on and taking them off, and doing it all with fogged masks and gloves. They got through every tiny hole, and then demanded to do it a last time before the evening was over. Very impressive.

--Wayne