HANCOCK COUNTY — They hope it’s training they never need to use.
Firefighters from the county’s joint Technical Rescue Team, a group of first-responders from the Greenfield Fire Territory and Sugar Creek Township Fire Department, took part recently in quarterly training. It focused on workplace accidents and extrication training when things go terribly wrong around machinery.
The stage was Precoat Metals, 1950 E. Main St., Greenfield.
Scott Elliott, a battalion chief for the fire territory and the team manager for the Technical Rescue Team, noted the group relies heavily on county industrial employers like Precoat Metals to help create entrapment scenarios for the training.
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“The training helps us use our skills to get the mannequins we use doing the entrapments out,” Elliott said.
While it’s difficult to replicate what a real entrapment might be like in a business that uses heavy machinery, getting basic ideas of how to approach a real incident through training is paramount.
“It’s important for us to get inside these types of buildings and do what we call pre-planning just in case,” Elliott said.
When the team does this kind of training, it always get a tour of the host facility so they’ll be familiar with the premises should the business ever need their assistance in an emergency.
Tony Bratcher, public information officer for the Sugar Creek department, is also part of the team and said the group selects a different scenario for each training session.
“This time, we were simulating something heavy on top of someone,” Bratcher said. “It’s a delicate process, because as you lift you’re trying to save a life, making sure the load doesn’t shift when you’re trying to save someone.”
He noted this scenario takes place about once a year. The team was thrilled that Precoat Metals — which handles material weighing thousands of pounds — allowed them to come in to hone their techniques.
“We get an opportunity to see what they do and check out the factory, and they get to see what we do and train using their equipment,” Bratcher said. “It’s a win-win.”
It’s the little things when minutes count, such as knowing how a machine operates so team members can understand what to do if that machine is involved in an accident.
“We’re a high-risk, low-frequency team,” Bratcher said, referring to the importance of understanding the environment in an emergency.
The team is composed of about 30 first-responders.
While firefighters do some type of training nearly every day, the first-responders who are part of the Technical Rescue Team get together only infrequently.
“The type of trainings the TRT does runs from rope rescues, high-angle/low-angle rescues to building collapse, trench rescues, swift water and ice rescues as well as heavy machinery extrications — it’s all specialized training,” said Corey Breese, public information officer for Greenfield Fire Territory.
Elliott noted using mannequins for extrication training isn’t ideal, but this type of training is valuable because it lets team members who may not normally work together get valuable experience and in facilities they might not ever go into unless for an emergency.
“We need to see and learn about each other’s districts and find out what we have in the county,” Elliott said. “These type of trainings are usually an all-hands-on-deck type of training where everyone is working — there wasn’t a whole lot of standing around.”
They know they have little room for error in an emergency.
“People expect us to get it right,” Elliott said. “We take this type of training very seriously.”
