Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By DONALD MOTTERN | Staff Writer

PELHAM – Pelham firefighters recently engaged in training exercises held at a residential property on Cahaba Valley Road in the North Shelby Fire District over a two-day period July 22-23.

As part of an ongoing training effort, the event was conducted in collaboration with the North Shelby Fire Department and focused on critical firefighting skills including forcible entry and search and rescue operations.

“The training is (taking place) on Cahaba Valley Road in the North Shelby Fire District and we are conducting mutual aid training with North Shelby Fire,” Pelham Fire Chief Mike Reid said.

For added immersion and a realistic experience, the trainings are actually taking place at a residential home whose owners have allowed the department to use as it is no longer in use.

“The new owners plan to tear down this home and build a new home (in its place), they are allowing us to train in it (in the meantime),” Reid said. “Sometimes we are offered abandoned houses by the owners to train in, which provides us with a great opportunity for realistic training.”

With a primary focus on forcible entry procedures and search and rescue operations, participating firefighters were first tasked with breaking down the door of the home. To make sure the procedure could be carried out multiple times, the home’s front door was substituted by a metal frame and a replaceable door that was installed on the front porch.

Once through the door, firefighters were then tasked with finding and removing practice victims from the inside of rooms within the home.

During the second aspect of this activity, the department also utilized smoke machines to simulate the visual environment of an active fire scenario.

This training series is already being followed by another focused-on firefighter safety and survival as well as procedures related to the rescuing of downed firefighters that is taking place over the course of the week of Monday, July 29.

“Our firefighters continually work to sharpen their skills for search and rescue, forcible entry, firefighter survival techniques and other fire ground tactics,” Reid said. “Thankfully, we don’t have a lot of house fires, but we have to maintain our skills so that if we need to rescue someone from their home during a fire we perform it to the highest level of proficiency. Life safety is our first priority, but we also need to be able to perform it effectively and safely for our personnel. Training is paramount to maintain our high state of readiness.”