Whoa...

Ok, that was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Right out of FF I testing and into the unit on Auto Extrication and Car Fires. Spent last week learning about tactics for car fires and safety on vehicle fire scenes. An interesting lecture, not things i would have thought about. Like bumper struts, high pressure "shocks" that cushion the bumper during low speed collisions, never would have thought to watch for them heating up and exploding. Lots of new things to think about as opposed to structure fires.

The more i think about it the more i have come to consider auto fires/accidents some of the most complex scenes we operate on. My asst. trainign coordinator put it best when he said we have to worry about patients, vehicle stability, passing traffic, crew integrity, and a myriad of other variables.

Also had a lesson and practicals for auto extrication, pretty cool thinking about shoring, cutting, and extrication. Never would have thought to think about the exercise as removing the car from around the victim, my thought process would be to cut the victim out of the car. Its just a different way to think about it. Basically a 6 hours lesson on Anatomy and physiology of cars. Pretty cool.

Last weekend was auto fires and extrication practicals, got to respond to 2 car fires bust up some hoods/windows and play with the crosslay some more. Definitely getting more confident with that one. Also got to play with elevators, never really considered the whole complexity of the ELEV incident, how to open doors, move cars, remove victims from stuck cars. things like that.

Well tonight is electrical utility control, and thursday is controlling gas utilities. So it should be interesting, get to interface with people from the respective utility companies.