More Training
Well we have had the weekend off from Firefighting. So we had to find some different training to do while in SLC. Several people have rented cars and we have gone off in different directions. A group went off to Park City to mountain bike and hike. Another group went and rode the bobsled track. And a group of us went to the Kennecott Utah Copper Mine. This is the largest open pit copper mine on the planet. It once was a mountain that was 9000' tall and now it is an open pit that is a mile deep.
The little dots that you see on the far side of the photo here are actually Caterpillar Dump Trucks that have 12' tall tires and can carry 120 tons in one load.
This is one of the shelf excavations that they are currently working on. We could see three different excavations that we working while we were there. I would have to guess that there were 80 or 90 dump trucks working while we were there.
So after dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (what a crappy meal!) we decided that we should continue our training and do some driver training. This came in the form of an indoor road race go kart track.
The races are 10 minutes long each, and the carts are very fast. Much better than your average karting track. I had the fastest lap on the most of the laps, but Joe beat me for the fastest overall lap time by a hunderedth of a second.
So that was our weekend training. On Monday we will be at the training center for the morning doing more blackboard scenario training as well as more turret operations in the Stryker crash trucks. After that we have the afternoon off and we will be doing night time incident scenarios from 7PM to Midnight. So we should get in another 3 or 4 full scale scenarios. Of these I will likely act as Incident Commander for one of these. And then hopefully I can get a crew and be part of the interior operations for the others.
On my last scenario in the inside of the Tuna Can we had a very good stressful operation. I had a crew of two plus myself. I took the backup position on the hoseline and so I had a nozzleman in front of me and a hose hauler behind me. We entered the right side of the aircraft on the overwing door with no obvious fire fore or aft. And since our priority was to get to the flight deck to rescue the crew we headed to the front of the aircraft. Well once we made the turn and got 6 feet into the aisle the instructors lit us up good. We had very heavy fire on both sides of us and it was getting warm quickly. The nozzleman quickly turned and opened the nozzle to fight the fire. Well as any of you who have done interior firefighting know, the line will get hung up at the worst time. When Randy had turned to fight the fire the line got kinked and wedged itself into the seats. I was trying to pull the line back and get us out of there ASAP. And I quickly realized that the line wasn't coming with me and at the same time the fire was banked down to our helmet level. So as I reached for and grabbed Randy by the airpack straps the instructor did the same thing and we yanked him out of the aisle and back to a safe location. As soon as he let go of the handline it straighted out and the hangup was gone.
So after we regrouped in a safe area we got the handline back in operation and knockdown the fire. And we advanced towards the flight deck again. And of course once we got into the aisle again they lit us up again. This time we were far enough forward to make it to the front door and turn around to suppress the fire. Once the fire was knocked we made one rescue in the flight deck and passed the victim on to the Rescue Team. And of course we had a flare up in the front while we were there. These instructors really like to beat up on people.
Once we got all of the fires suppressed in the cabin we suddenly had heavy smoke coming from the kitchen area. So we had to advance to the front again to check it out. Once there we found out that the fire was coming from the lower deck of the aircraft. So we had to back out of the cabin and off of the aircraft to gain access to the lower deck. Once outside the Rescue crew had the lower deck door open and we suppressed the fire inside, and of course the instructors started a ground fire right at the front of the plane where we were operating. So our crew started working on the ground fire when I was notified that we were down to 300 gallons of water left on the truck. So I then had to pull back the crew out of the hot zone. That is a tough assignment to carry out. Tell a crew of FF's to back away from a roaring fire. You need a leash to do it.
So as you can see they are very good at challenging a team and I found it very rewarding to have so many things thrown at me as the crew leader. A nice way to test my skills.
Ok, now it is time for bed. I have to get ready for tomorrows drills.
Until next time.
R.J.
The little dots that you see on the far side of the photo here are actually Caterpillar Dump Trucks that have 12' tall tires and can carry 120 tons in one load.
This is one of the shelf excavations that they are currently working on. We could see three different excavations that we working while we were there. I would have to guess that there were 80 or 90 dump trucks working while we were there.
So after dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (what a crappy meal!) we decided that we should continue our training and do some driver training. This came in the form of an indoor road race go kart track.
The races are 10 minutes long each, and the carts are very fast. Much better than your average karting track. I had the fastest lap on the most of the laps, but Joe beat me for the fastest overall lap time by a hunderedth of a second.
So that was our weekend training. On Monday we will be at the training center for the morning doing more blackboard scenario training as well as more turret operations in the Stryker crash trucks. After that we have the afternoon off and we will be doing night time incident scenarios from 7PM to Midnight. So we should get in another 3 or 4 full scale scenarios. Of these I will likely act as Incident Commander for one of these. And then hopefully I can get a crew and be part of the interior operations for the others.
On my last scenario in the inside of the Tuna Can we had a very good stressful operation. I had a crew of two plus myself. I took the backup position on the hoseline and so I had a nozzleman in front of me and a hose hauler behind me. We entered the right side of the aircraft on the overwing door with no obvious fire fore or aft. And since our priority was to get to the flight deck to rescue the crew we headed to the front of the aircraft. Well once we made the turn and got 6 feet into the aisle the instructors lit us up good. We had very heavy fire on both sides of us and it was getting warm quickly. The nozzleman quickly turned and opened the nozzle to fight the fire. Well as any of you who have done interior firefighting know, the line will get hung up at the worst time. When Randy had turned to fight the fire the line got kinked and wedged itself into the seats. I was trying to pull the line back and get us out of there ASAP. And I quickly realized that the line wasn't coming with me and at the same time the fire was banked down to our helmet level. So as I reached for and grabbed Randy by the airpack straps the instructor did the same thing and we yanked him out of the aisle and back to a safe location. As soon as he let go of the handline it straighted out and the hangup was gone.
So after we regrouped in a safe area we got the handline back in operation and knockdown the fire. And we advanced towards the flight deck again. And of course once we got into the aisle again they lit us up again. This time we were far enough forward to make it to the front door and turn around to suppress the fire. Once the fire was knocked we made one rescue in the flight deck and passed the victim on to the Rescue Team. And of course we had a flare up in the front while we were there. These instructors really like to beat up on people.
Once we got all of the fires suppressed in the cabin we suddenly had heavy smoke coming from the kitchen area. So we had to advance to the front again to check it out. Once there we found out that the fire was coming from the lower deck of the aircraft. So we had to back out of the cabin and off of the aircraft to gain access to the lower deck. Once outside the Rescue crew had the lower deck door open and we suppressed the fire inside, and of course the instructors started a ground fire right at the front of the plane where we were operating. So our crew started working on the ground fire when I was notified that we were down to 300 gallons of water left on the truck. So I then had to pull back the crew out of the hot zone. That is a tough assignment to carry out. Tell a crew of FF's to back away from a roaring fire. You need a leash to do it.
So as you can see they are very good at challenging a team and I found it very rewarding to have so many things thrown at me as the crew leader. A nice way to test my skills.
Ok, now it is time for bed. I have to get ready for tomorrows drills.
Until next time.
R.J.
posted by R.J. at 12:23 AM
2 Comments:
No fan of open pit mining or the waste they create, but nevertheless very interesting to see. Go-Karts are great – pretty noisy indoors I bet. Hearing protection required!? That tuna can stuff sounds WAY too hot for this one, but good for you.
Have you seen any alpacas?
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