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August 3 - August 10,2003 |
Firefighters in Training
Simulated scenarios help to prepare our future heroes
By Alberto Lunati
Originally Published: 2003-07-20
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Ontario Firefighters training
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It is at 220 Bemondsay Avenue in Toronto where the firefighting recruits of the fifth largest department in all of North America come to learn.
Rain, wind, snow, sun: it doesn't matter. Their training goes on incessantly, preparing them for joining the 3,100 firefighters who watch over Torontonians' tranquillity.
"What we tried to recreate here," explains Ernie Yakiwchuk, in charge of the training facility, "is a perfect simulation of situations our people will have to face in the future."
The Bermondsay Avenue Centre offers a wide choice of these. After some paperwork and written rules, practice is the point. Practice that makes one sweat. From climbing tests, where firefighters don a harness and prepare to be lowered from any height, to the modern technologies used by a special team - of only 65 members - called HUSAR (Heavy Urban Search and Rescue), specialized in interventions akin to the 9/11 disasters in New York. "We need to act as fast as possible," explains HUSAR captain Alan Thomas, "and our equipment is suited to the task." Under the co-ordination of five "special commanders", dealing respectively with search, rescue, medical aid, technical interventions and logistics, team members carry equipment weighing 250 lbs per "suitcase", which can do practically anything. "As soon as we reach the area," explains Thomas, who co-ordinated rescue operations on the occasion of the recent explosion on Bloor Street, "we secure it against possible new hazards, such as collapsing walls or gas leaks."
The equipment of emergency teams includes a computer "brain" that assists in accessing all the information that could save some lives. Also included are walkie-talkies, indispensable for field co-ordination of operations. "These two-way radios," adds Thomas, "cannot work underground. When we must intervene underground, we avail ourselves of the assistance of an operator who monitors our frequencies and manages communications with underground teams via special equipment. We also have infrared TV cameras that can locate bodies by detecting their heat and other, based on fibre optics, used for looking under rubble. Finally, we have special detectors for pulses and vibrations."
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