GRAFTON — The Grafton Volunteer Fire Department (GVFD) recently held technical rescue training during what Brattleboro's Rescue Inc. technical rescue trainer Capt. Drew Hazleton termed “ideal conditions” - an iced pond with open water at around 34 to 38 degrees and air temperatures in the “low teens.”
Masochistic? Not when the training covers ice and water rescues.
Rescue Inc. conducts training throughout Windham County, about 40 sessions per year.
“This is one of our primary goals, to get people trained so they can effect more rescues [on their own],” Hazleton said.
“Putting us out of business would be a good day,” he added. But for now, “it's all about education and training.”
Made up of mostly local Grafton volunteer fire and rescue personnel, the volunteers donned either wet or dry suits to go into the water.
The suits kept them “mostly dry,” according to Hazleton.
Seven of the volunteers came from Grafton, and the eighth came from North Townshend.
“We've been in the process of expanding [rescue capabilities] for a couple of years now,” said GVFD's Assistant Fire Chief Keith Hermiz.
The department received a $10,000 Community Impact grant from IBM in October 2011 to develop a swift water rescue team. Funds from the grant purchased some of the suits that the volunteers wore.
Only months earlier, GVFD found themselves responding to a technical rescue when a car that was washed away became lodged in a tree in the middle of a raging torrent east of town, and the driver had to be rescued.
Two GVFD members and one volunteer from Rescue Inc. were able to carry out the rescue to a happy ending. But it was clear, said Hermiz, that the department needed “more people trained in technical rescue.”
The department would like to develop a local, volunteer-based technical rescue team that could serve Grafton and surrounding communities.
GVFD's Facebook page noted recently that the department wishes to use the IBM grant “to jump start the acquisition of equipment and training in areas such as ice rescue, water rescue, low-angle rope rescue, and wilderness search and rescue.”
“We are working with other agencies, like Rescue Inc. in Brattleboro, to deploy small, local teams who could respond quickly to small-scale incidents and who provide each other mutual aid,” the department wrote.
Mutual aid is an interstate emergency communications system that automatically parses a call into a tiered response that relies on towns closest to one another, based on their equipment and available responders, to back up any first responders to any emergency event.
That system was tested during the first week following Tropical Storm Irene. Rescue Inc. responded to approximately 58 technical rescue calls, according to Hazleton.
“We were able to get to everybody,” he said. “The first three days, we were out for 72 hours straight.”
Mutual aid was crucial following Irene and, while the response in Windham County got the job done, Hermiz said that “it pointed out the gaps” in expertise and response coverage, “giving us that extra incentive” to pursue technical response training in Grafton.
In and out of the water
The three-hour exercise meant the eight volunteers learned how to get into both dry suits and wet suits, and to differentiate when one would be preferable to the other in a rescue.
“Dry suits will keep you warm and dry, but you're not going to be able to use your fingers,” Hazleton said, referring to the thick neoprene gloves at the hands.
“They float, too,” he added. “You kind of bob.”
The wet suits, on the other hand, close at the neck, wrists, and ankles, preventing water from getting in.
But “you will get wet - some - in them,” Hazelton said. “You'll want to have some clothes you can change into.”
In spite of the cold temperatures, none of the geared-up volunteers complained of cold on this January afternoon as they crab-walked or belly-crawled across the ice to the open water in the small pond.
They drilled using various rescue modalities to get a victim out of the water, as each volunteer took a turn being “the victim” and being “the rescuer,” cycling in and out of the water dozens of times over three hours.
While there are no requirements or certificates for the volunteer fire and rescue worker training in technical rescue, “we train to National Fire Protection Association standards,” Hazleton explained.
Hermiz concurred, saying, “The standards are high, and we do all our technical training to those standards.”
Rescue Inc.'s 14-member technical rescue team is certified at the national level for high-angle, low-angle, vehicle extrication, cold water, and swift water protocols.
Hermiz said that both the national and state governments are recognizing “catchment areas” by encouraging communities to collaborate on grant applications for equipment and training to form inter-community technical response capabilities.
Training will continue in the spring with swift water technical rescue training, according to Hazleton.
“You think this was fun? We get up to all kinds of tricks training in swift water,” he said.
Grafton Volunteer Fire and Rescue is in the process of “buying the right equipment” like suits for cold and swift water rescue.
“We'll still have to depend on Rescue Inc.,” Hermitz said. “It's a process, but we're building on it step by step.”
And they hope to have a technical rescue mutual aid system that will let towns around Grafton rely on one another.
“We learned that in Irene,” he said. “We have to take care of each other.”