This past May, two members of the Martensville Fire Department (MFD) had the opportunity to take part in a unique four-day training course in Saskatoon. Deputy Chief Dean Brooman and Firefighter/Paramedic Dustin Hollman participated in the Fire Ground Survival Train-the-Trainer Course, which was taught by Master Instructors through the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) at the John Deere Building, a location utilized by the Saskatoon Fire Department for training.
Through this course, Brooman and Hollman not only learned skills and techniques to help them on calls, but they also had the chance to become certified to train those same skills to their fellow MFD members.
Prior to participating in this course, firefighters were required to complete an online section of the course. Throughout the four-day training session, a variety of evolutions were held, which included numerous self-rescue techniques. On the final day, firefighters had the opportunity to go through the skills they had been taught and operate as though they were teaching it.
The first three days those attending worked through each evolution, with things like going through an 18-inch hole, learning how to maneuver their way through with equipment and then learning how to coach others that may have different body types on that same thing. Another lesson was how to do a ‘window-hang’ in situations where firefighters may be trapped in a building above the ground floor and after calling ‘Mayday’, they hang out of a window with only one hand and foot remaining inside the building until help arrives in the form of a ladder.
Some of the other lessons included using a window repelling system; ladder bail outs where they go down a ladder head first out of a window; entanglement, where firefighters have to crawl through a bunch of wires that they can very easily get snagged on and learning how to remain calm and get untangled, and more.
“At the end of it all, there was a big confidence maze, which included all of the things that we had learned at some point or another and we had to test ourselves to see if we could stay calm. Not getting frustrated is a huge thing because if any of these situations ever happened in real-life, one of the biggest things is to stay calm,” Firefighter Hollman explained.
Hollman, who has been a member of the MFD for the past seven years and a full-time firefighter in Saskatoon for the past three years, also noted that one of the biggest benefits to this particular course is the chance to share these lessons with the other members of the MFD.
“This was a life-safety training course to help prepare us for those ‘just in case’ moments that could potentially come up on a call. If something goes wrong with one of our guys, or ourselves, we need to know how to self-rescue, or rescue our partners. To be able to pass these skills along is huge,” Hollman said.
The MFD is constantly working on training their members, and Hollman added that when it comes to firefighting and medical calls, there is always new information coming out and research being done, so they work hard to always be learning and to never become complacent.
“A driving force for many of us is that desire to help others on one of their worst days and we all have families and people that we care about that want to see us come home at the end of the day. Just because we have that gear on doesn’t make us invincible, so constantly learning new skills is such an important part of this job. I am really grateful that I was able to take part in this course and look forward to more opportunities in the future,” Hollman said.
