Firefighters work to recover a fellow crew member in a simulation requiring CPR during the Randy Carpenter Memorial Firefighter Survival and Rescue School hosted in Woodland last week.
A firefighter makes their way through a corridor filled with wires simulating a collapsed building during the Randy Carpenter Memorial Firefighter Survival and Rescue School hosted in Woodland last week.
A firefighter heads down a ladder before turning 180 degrees and sliding down as part of "bailout" training during the Randy Carpenter Memorial Firefighter Survival and Rescue School hosted in Woodland last week.
WOODLAND — Dozens of firefighters in full gear came to a vacant warehouse in the Woodland industrial area last week but the reason wasn’t a fire.
Three days of intense training brought out local and regional first responders to help save themselves and their co-workers while they are out saving lives.
Several firefighters from districts in Clark and Cowlitz counties along with some firefighters from Oregon took part in the Randy Carpenter Memorial Firefighter Survival and Rescue School, a relatively new program where the focus is on getting everyone out alive — including the firefighters themselves.
The first day featured exercises focused on the firefighter saving themselves. Morning exercises focused on window exits, navigating through a webbed passageway to simulate a collapsed building, using a firehose to escape a building while having the visor completely blacked out as well as performing CPR on a firefighter.
The second day featured tasks involved saving other firefighters caught in simulated life-threatening situations. On the final day firefighters were tasked with specific rapid intervention tasks, compiling what firefighters had learned in the previous two days to use in specific scenarios.
The school was put on through cooperation with program lead Michael Snodgrass, a lieutenant with Gresham Fire Department, and the Randy Carpenter Memorial Foundation, an organization created in honor of Randall Carpenter, a firefighter who lost his life during a fire at an automotive store in Coos Bay, Oregon in 2002.
Snodgrass said the program came about due to a desire to have comprehensive survival training but at a price point manageable for firefighters to take the class. He went around to different trainings across the country, though none of what he was encountering was a full “package” of multi-day training for a reasonable price.
After attending a training in Idaho sponsored by the Randy Carpenter Memorial Foundation he became aware of the organization and its pursuits in firefighter safety, eventually coming into a partnership with the foundation whose name is featured in the program’s title.
Each of the exercises had a firefighter death associated with it, Snodgrass said. Nationwide, about 100 firefighters are killed in the line of duty every year, Clark County Fire and Rescue Captain/Training Officer Abe Rommel said.
Rommel said several Clark County Fire and Rescue firefighters attended the program in Clackamas last year and came back lauding the program, eventually leading to having the Survival and Rescue School in Woodland. The training building, formerly an operation for Northwest Rose Growers, is planned to be demolished to put in an industrial park, but the property’s current owners, the Port of Woodland “very generously” allowed Clark County Fire and Rescue to use it before teardown.
Rommel said on top of the firefighters taking part in the multi-day course, all Clark County Fire and Rescue crews were able to come to the location for smaller, single-day training sessions, along with some Clark County Fire District 6 crew.
Although the training was more tailored to survival in fires, learning the skills in the program also translated to helping civilians, but the kind of scenarios were a bit different given the nature of what a fully-suited firefighter could get themselves into.
“Because we go in, in an encapsulated environment in our gear, we can get ourselves in a lot more trouble,” Rommel said.
Being able to withstand blazes also meant firefighters could get in significantly more dangerous situations before succumbing to the elements.
Helping to lead the program were instructors who had previously underwent the course, now coming back to volunteer their time and knowhow to the cause.
Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue firefighter Bryan Green was one of the instructors running the bailout station, where firefighters had to navigate out of a window and onto a ladder as swiftly as possible.
All instructors were there as volunteers taking time off to help lead the exercises — Green said he had completed a shift right before heading out to Woodland for the training. Green took the course last year and remarked on the intensity of the program, mentioning he had bloody elbows and knees coming out of it.
The immersion was a big part of the program, as one of Clark County Fire and Rescue engines was running, oxygen gauges were ringing and the condition of the vacant warehouse added a layer of grime more indicative of an actual incident scene than a sterile training course.
“When you go to fires, this is what it looks like,” Green said, adding the comprehensive nature of the program was far different from routine exercises.
“You are fully in it, you’re kind of living and breathing this for three full days of training. It’s not an hour training and then you go to lunch,” Green said.
