Firefighter Rescue Technician
I took a 40 hour firefighting class this week, and got a certificate proclaiming me a “Firefighter Rescue Technician”.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great class. The biggest problem is that the class lacked focus. I went there every day for five days, and I’m not sure what it was I was supposed to be learning.
When I signed up for the class, the class was called “RIT Company Operations”. I knew exactly what I expected to learn, and I was excited to see what they had to offer. However, sometime between the registration and the class, they changed the name to “Firefighter Rescue Technician”.
No problem, right? Firefighter Rescue Technician still sounds like it might have a lot to do with RIT. (Perhaps I should explain that RIT stands for Rapid Intervention Team. At every fire where firefighters are entering a dangerous environment, there is supposed to be a designated RIT company ready to rescue the firefighters.)
Unfortunately, the “Firefighter Rescue Technician” class didn’t have a whole lot to do with RIT operations.
The first two days covered a lot of SCBA. Sort of a Smoke Divers Lite. I guess I would have been more impressed if I hadn’t already taken the full Smoke Divers class in April from IFSI.
Then we did some firefighter survival drills: ladder bailouts, repelling out a window using just your SCBA bottle to slow your decent, repelling out a window using a munter hitch on a carabiner. We also did some actual rescue drills, the most interesting of which involved lowering a rescuer through a hole to a lower level and then lifting the victim and rescuer back up through the hole.
I was disappointed because we never really talked about RIT company operations. No discussion of what tools a RIT company ought to have, no discussion of what routine actions a RIT company ought to take when at a fire. Even worse, there was no real discussion about techniques to move an unconscious firefighter, and all of our drills used a 30 pound dummy as the victim. I defy you to find me a 30 lb. firefighter. Also, there was no discussion about various rescue air supplies available, no opportunity to practice establishing an air supply for a downed firefighter and then maintaining that air supply while the firefighter is removed from the building.
It wasn’t a horrible class. We did some good drills, and practiced some important basic skills. But I was hoping for so much more.
