By Marla Mills


Many will remember starting school, and the teacher asking the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. A popular choice amongst the boys was a fireman, there is a certain aspect with that job which fires the imagination. There's certainly more to the job than holding a hose and directing water at a flaming building. To maintain their high standards the service insists that everyone undergoes fire fighter training.

No two fires are exactly the same, there are certain areas where there are similarities. Maybe you will have heard of something known as the fire triangle. This illustrates the three things a blaze needs to survive, these are oxygen, heat and fuel. Were you to remove anyone element the blaze will extinguish. One thing that the crews do when they attend an emergency call is decide which element they are going to remove.

Whenever you see news footage of emergency crews tackling a blaze, you will observe they are using hoses. The water jets and sprays are being utilized to cool the surrounding areas and the flames. What they are really doing is removing the heat element from the triangle.

You will often notice that some members from the crew are wearing breathing apparatus. There will also be someone controlling these teams. As you might expect this can only be done after careful instruction.

Notice the axes and pry bars that these breathing apparatus teams are carrying. They will enter the blaze and physically break apart the fire. Again referring to the triangle this time they are removing any fuel that the blaze could feed itself with. Operating within the flames themselves is not for the faint hearted and only those who are trained do so.

The crews base location will determine the type of incidents they are likely to face. Different incidents need different approaches. A warehouse blaze will be treated differently to a crash at an airport. Airports have so many flammable liquids in their vicinity that often blazes are fought using foam. The foam removes the oxygen and also cools, but if it isn't used properly the flames can breakthrough.

Also there are major incidents out on the highways which the crews attend. The trucks carry a wide array of specialist recovery equipment. This can include inflatable bags and cutting equipment. These are used to assist a victim escape from a crushed vehicle. If they cut in the wrong place it is possible that the situation can be made worse.

Maybe the schoolboy dream involves driving the firetruck with the siren and lights going. In reality it isn't like driving your family car, a whole different way of driving has to be learned. These are obtained at a specialist driving school. Even then the firetrucks all handle differently depending on how much water they are carrying.

Hopefully from this brief overview it is easier to understand why fire fighter training plays such an important part. It is part of the reason why a fireman becomes so well accepted into the community once they are fully trained. As with all of the emergency services it requires a particular type of person to go through all of the instructional drills.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment

Powered by Blogger.

Popular Posts

Blog Archive