Fire Fighter 1: The Maze
I've been in class to get my Fire Fighter 1 certification for the past 2 and half months. Life has been crazy because it's been after work from 7pm to 10pm, even 11pm sometimes. So far it's been an absolute blast with mostly great but some downright “scary as hell” experiences.
The maze was was one of the "scary as hell" experiences and was the only time I've felt real fear on this course. The first night we traversed it, we were on air through our SCBA's (Self Contained breathing Apparatus, our air pack). The maze is dark and enclosed but we could still see vague shapes in the darkness. We had to climb through windows with chains hanging in them, crawl through tires, up stairs, down stairs and finally through a 15 ft piece of ventilation ducting. My partner and I (you always navigate in pairs in a burning building) did it in about 10 minutes and with plenty of air left in our cylinders. Lot's of fun. The second time we went in, 2 nights later, not so much...
On the second evolution we did what we thought was the same exact maze, except we were blindfolded this time. The first half of the maze remained unchanged and my partner and I successfully navigated the various tires and windows easily. We then came to a raised section that used to have a floor but now was just beams...ummm, guys, where's the floor? Not there, just a 6 foot drop into a hole - I think. Remember we're blind at the moment. For some reason I am now down to 25% of my air from the stress. Finally after getting through all that we come to the ventilation ducting.
Thank God, nearly done.
Boy, was I wrong. I go through first, and half way through the shaft I get stuck. I can't move forward, so I back out a little and try again. No dice, there is something in the way and I can't figure out what. My partner can't hear me shouting that I am stuck so he is trying to move into the vent behind me. I try to move back again and this time my face piece gets ripped off my face by the obstacle. Air escaping all over the place. Panic sets in as I try to rapidly recover my face piece.
I finally get my face piece untangled from what I now know is a rope strung across the shaft to ensnare would be fire fighters. Once my mask is on I take 2 deep breathes and my low air alert stops making noise. This only happens when you have about 1 minute of air left. I go into the shaft again and this time I get under the rope and out the other side. Now my partners turn...
He gets his air pack stuck and can't get it free of the rope. My face piece is now sucking to my face because I have no air at all now. He starts to panic a bit so now I crawl back down the vent shaft to unhook him and finally I get him free and we get out of the maze. I couldn't rip the damn face piece off my face fast enough, sucking down the night air like it was going out of fashion. As we were the first to go through, we got hear the shouts of “I'm stuck! I'm out of air!” coming from the vent shaft. I was so glad this wasn't a real fire...
Once all of us had made it through, I felt for the first time, since starting this course, that I'd taken a big step to becoming a real fire fighter. After this class we lost a couple of members, realizing fire fighting maybe wasn't for them.
The maze was was one of the "scary as hell" experiences and was the only time I've felt real fear on this course. The first night we traversed it, we were on air through our SCBA's (Self Contained breathing Apparatus, our air pack). The maze is dark and enclosed but we could still see vague shapes in the darkness. We had to climb through windows with chains hanging in them, crawl through tires, up stairs, down stairs and finally through a 15 ft piece of ventilation ducting. My partner and I (you always navigate in pairs in a burning building) did it in about 10 minutes and with plenty of air left in our cylinders. Lot's of fun. The second time we went in, 2 nights later, not so much...
On the second evolution we did what we thought was the same exact maze, except we were blindfolded this time. The first half of the maze remained unchanged and my partner and I successfully navigated the various tires and windows easily. We then came to a raised section that used to have a floor but now was just beams...ummm, guys, where's the floor? Not there, just a 6 foot drop into a hole - I think. Remember we're blind at the moment. For some reason I am now down to 25% of my air from the stress. Finally after getting through all that we come to the ventilation ducting.
Thank God, nearly done.
Boy, was I wrong. I go through first, and half way through the shaft I get stuck. I can't move forward, so I back out a little and try again. No dice, there is something in the way and I can't figure out what. My partner can't hear me shouting that I am stuck so he is trying to move into the vent behind me. I try to move back again and this time my face piece gets ripped off my face by the obstacle. Air escaping all over the place. Panic sets in as I try to rapidly recover my face piece.
I finally get my face piece untangled from what I now know is a rope strung across the shaft to ensnare would be fire fighters. Once my mask is on I take 2 deep breathes and my low air alert stops making noise. This only happens when you have about 1 minute of air left. I go into the shaft again and this time I get under the rope and out the other side. Now my partners turn...
He gets his air pack stuck and can't get it free of the rope. My face piece is now sucking to my face because I have no air at all now. He starts to panic a bit so now I crawl back down the vent shaft to unhook him and finally I get him free and we get out of the maze. I couldn't rip the damn face piece off my face fast enough, sucking down the night air like it was going out of fashion. As we were the first to go through, we got hear the shouts of “I'm stuck! I'm out of air!” coming from the vent shaft. I was so glad this wasn't a real fire...
Once all of us had made it through, I felt for the first time, since starting this course, that I'd taken a big step to becoming a real fire fighter. After this class we lost a couple of members, realizing fire fighting maybe wasn't for them.
Labels: fire fighter 1, fire fighting
posted by Alex Charalambides | 7:27 AM
1 Comments:
Sounds so scary - I'm glad you made it out. Although - now I'm going to be more horrified every time you go to a call.
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