Friday, October 21, 2011  During bailout training, one of our members forgot to check his tri-link. Fortunately, he had a secondary harness and belay line. He missed it at the start of the tour and then again during the training exercise. Each member has an individual bailout harness pursuant to the NY regulations and is required to check the harness at the start of the tour along with the rest of his PPE.




 

Tuesday, August 9, 2011  During a drill, the low battery alarm activated on the SCBA. The crew continued to drill for another 10 minutes. When they went to activate their PASS alarm, it sounded for 10 seconds and died. They did not realize that this might happen.

Remember, when an alarm goes off when you are in an IDLH situation, it is time to exit.
 

 

Friday, June 24, 2011  During a rigorous extrication / rescue training scenario a firefighter became overheated and dehydrated. FF was complaining of chest pain radiating to the back, neck, and left arm. This progressed to confusion and severe headache prior to the arrival of ALS transport. The firefighter was not overweight and was regularly active. The weather was warm and all participants were wearing full bunker gear PPE. Drinkning water was provided and the firefighter stated to officers he had consumed 3 bottles of water in the last hour. This was later found to be false, likely due to the firefighter's confusion and disorientation. The firefighter was transported to the local hospital, was administered 2L of NS fluid and returned home without further defect.
LESSONS LEARNED: Safety and training officers are responsible for more than ensuring firefighter don't kill themselves with unsafe acts. Although water was provided for all participants, officers should be ensuring that all participants consume an adequate amount of fluids. Furthermore, firefighters must know their limits and stop before they get to a point of endangering the mission of the rest of the department. Like driving safely to the station or the scene, a dead or injured firefighter is worse for the outcome of the incident than no firefighter at all!
 

Friday, April 29, 2011  On my second night of my control burn for fire school, my crew entered the acquired structure that was lit on fire in one room. The fire was lit in one room and quickly grew to the second ignition area saved for another fire, we would’ve have made it to the fire quicker if someone from the other teams was in the way of my egress to the structure. I was the nozzle man quickly entering the Alpha side of the structure, and crawling the small hallway to the rear of the structure to extinguish our fire when to the right of me i see heavy smoke banking down to my helmet and within seconds heavy fire was nearly over mine and my classmates heads, my second guy behind me quickly alerted me of the increased worsening condition and I was able to retreat a few feet away from the near flashover to safely and efficiently extinguish the fire without incident.

Situational Awareness- Although it was my job in which I did. The other crewmembers should have been aware of the worsening condition prior to me encountering the near flashover occurring next to me. This could have possibly caused some injury if we didn’t see the fire any sooner than we did.
 

 

Friday, April 15, 2011  For those of you who may not have heard about an incident we had during a training evolution on Wednesday 4/13. We had a firefighter receive injuries after an axe came loose from a holder at the tip of our extended aerial ladder. The axe fell approximately 75 feet striking the firefighter who was on the turntable in the helmet. The firefighter was knocked unconscious for over a minute. He was transported to the hospital where he was examined and tests were run. He has been released from the hospital and is with his wife. We do not know when he will return to work, but is expected to do so. The helmet he was wearing is damaged and will not be returned to service. If this firefighter had not had his helmet on, the injuries to his head would have been catastrophic and we would be mourning the loss of a member.

This was a very serious incident and will be investigated. Lessons learned will be shared with you and others so that we may learn from it. We will share with everyone what we find out so that questions can be answered. Remain patient as we work through the facts and reach a conclusion.

Remember to wear appropriate PPE at all times. When drill is winding down or the fire is out, we must remain vigilant and not become complacent.
 

Wednesday, February 23, 2011  One of my students using an AV-3000 facepiece had the snap at the top of the facepiece come unsnapped after donning the facepiece. The student did not realize that this happened but an alert instructor saw this and stopped the evolution. This is the 3rd time while teaching that I have had students using the AV-3000 have one of the snaps come apart just prior to entering a smoke filled atmosphere. This is a major defect with this facepiece and will most likely unless addressed by Scott injure or kill a firefighter.

 

Wednesday, February 23, 2011  While at a live fire training at a neighboring cities training academy I had an SCBA failure prior to making entry to the burn building. The high pressure hose from the pressure regulator that attached to the over the shoulder pressure guage detatched. I had already completed 2 evolutions prior to this failure. Thankfully this happened prior to making entry for a 3rd evolution. This was a cheap lesson on checking your SCBA daily more than just air and functionality of the pass and regulator. As a side note the SCBA's were just serviced by our local vendor. Hopefully this can raise awareness on a routine task that could have had a bad outcome had it failed in the live fire training.

LESSONS LEARNED:
Check all of your equipment thouroughly on a daily basis!
 

 

Saturday, December 4, 2010  While doing recruit training, one of the things that we need to see if they can perform, is climbing a Quint, 75 ft in the air at a 70 degree angle. While one of the recruits was climbing, and almost to the top, he accidentally hit the one of our 12 ft pike poles that is attached to the side of the ladder. The pole fell about 70 ft, straight down. It came within 10 ft of the group of recruits and instructors. It then struck the side of the Quint. If we were not paying attention to the climb, it is a possibility that someone could have been struck and severely injured during this training exercise.

LESSONS LEARNED:Always clarify the basics and safety first during ANY exercise. Take measures to make the apparatus and other equipment secure

 

Friday, November 26, 2010  During a multicompany drill our assignment was to perform vertical ventilation on a residential ventilation prop. Everything went well until we noticed the chainsaw was not cutting through the OSB. Within seconds we determined the chain was on backwards and finished the hole with an axe.

LESSONS LEARNED: Do thorough checkouts of your equipment in addition to the apparatus you are driving. Bring an axe to the roof with you in case of a chainsaw failure.

 

Wednesday, November 10, 2010  One of our career paramedics suffered a serious injury during firefighter training in October. He is a career medic and a paid-on-call firefighter. During an evening training with ladders he fell off the ladder as he descended and struck the ground. He was transported to the local hospital where he was diagnosed with a fractured clavicle, fractured humerus and fractured scapula. His prognosis is uncertain and will be off work for six to eight months if all goes well. Worst case scenario is that this could end his career as a paramedic.

LESSONS LEARNED: All firefighting/EMS duties should be taken seriously and performed with great care. This applies not only on emergency scenes but as in this case, trainings also.

 

Monday, October 11, 2010  While performing a live fire evolution the nozzle man didn’t recheck his setting on his automatic nozzle while in the burn room. The nozzle was purged outside and set on straight but while advancing, they let the nozzle drag and it switched to a wide fog. Ceiling temps recorded about 900-1000 degrees. It only took 2-3 seconds for him to realize what he did but it was to late. I had to pull my 2 guys out of the room while we could. NO ONE WAS INJURED THANK GOD. The turnout coats was badly discolored and reflective was burnt off and melted some bourkes. Had we been in there for a little longer it would have been much different


LESSONS LEARNED: I have been a firefighter for 10 years. Automatic nozzles are still my number one choice in nozzles but YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE OF YOUR SETTINGS. Have more nozzle discipline. I’m sure he or anyone in my group would make the mistake again.
 

 

Tuesday, August 31, 2010  ...

 

Tuesday, August 31, 2010  We attended a live fire training exercise at our county fire training grounds. The grounds are well maintained and watched over by numerous full time training professionals. Areas depts are permitted to use the grounds under the supervision of the training staff. This particular training ground has a 2 story concrete building that support both Class A burns and propane burns. While training on the second floor (a propane room) the room filled with unburned propane vapors. With two fortunately well trained FF working an evolution the excess gas lit off causing a propane flashover. Injuries were limited to minor burns around the hood, and on the ears.

LESSONS LEARNED: There is some talk that this prop has been "acting up recently" if that is the case the prop should not be used until it's correct operation is verified. Make sure everyone knows that even in the "same old burn building" that you have been in many times before, you can get hurt.

 

Friday, July 16, 2010  We had an incident transpire at our drill tonight which resulted in the injury of multiple firefighters. A malfunction of the deck gun on Rescue 34 sent 2 firefighters falling to the ground and injuring another along the way. A forth firefighter was also injured when the deck gun hit him. Three of these individuals were transported by Chal-Brit Regional EMS to Doylestown Hospital, while one self transported.

All of these individuals have been checked out at Doylestown Hospital and released as of 12:30 this morning. With the exception of one who broke his wrist, everyone else went home with scrapes, bruises and sores. Luckily, this wasn't as bad as it could be.
 

 

Tuesday, February 23, 2010  Our Department was training a a burn building. The intent was to get Probie Firefighters the experiece of actually watching the development of a fire inside a building. After a successful burn, the probationary firefighters that were learning left the building while other firefighters went in to clean up. As the clean up commenced on firefighter with a small booster line that had been used to wash away debris pointed the line out the window to start start a small waterfight with the firefighters on the ground. The other firefighters laughed an carried on with the work. As I, and six other firefighters were in the building finsihing up, there was suddenly a loud roar and the whole concrete building shook. Water flooded in the building. After about a minute the water stopped flowing. I heard a loud shout, ran outside and saw one firefighter clutching his face bloud pouring out his eye. Apparently, a LT and a FF pointed a deck gun at the building and opened it up full boar. The water hit a metal shutter which than struck the FF, breaking his orbital bone, causing severe if temporary damage to his eye. The two firefighters involved recieved a two week suspension, which convintly ened in tome for the yearly company elections, where both of them won positions by default. The LT kept his Lt position, and the FF moved up to the stations only Captain.

LESSONS LEARNED:

DO NOT POINT DECK GUNS AT PEOPLE!!!! I always thought that was common sense, however it seems apparent that not everyone, even fire line officers know that. Furthermore, the Chief of the departments, and the Chiefs of Union Fire, the department that owns the burn building were not contancted, and not aware of what happend for some time.