To add to your list of professional challenges, commercial and “heavy” vehicles are changing too. Everything from school and transit buses to garbage trucks, cement mixers, and even fire apparatus is changing dramatically.
Tougher metals and new construction methods and techniques have forced us into a new way of thinking about extrication. A big part of that new thinking involves our initial as well as our ever-evolving size-up.
What, exactly, does “new technology” or “new rescue technology” really mean?
In the span of an hour or two, we saw temperatures drop more than 30 degrees, and the wind began to howl. A winter weather warning appeared on my phone, with snow forecast at our elevation.
With COVID-19 still very much alive and active, rural fire departments are struggling to find new and engaging training opportunities. Understandably, outside hands-on training programs are few and far between.
How we as firefighters deal with “it” is what can make the difference. Are you whining, or are you shining?
Simply stated, in the same way that what we don’t know or what we don’t keep up on regarding what goes into new vehicles (that we are tasked to perform extrication ops on) can kill us, so too can new vehicle car fires.
Community spread, social distancing, “wear face masks,” “don’t wear face masks,” reopening stages, second wave, and all of the other phrases that we have been constantly bombarded with since the late winter/early spring—how do they affect our rural fire department operations as we move into the 2020 wildland fire season?
Changing SOPs is a painstaking job, but it seems to me that we will all be better, be healthier, and live longer as a result of those changes. Stay safe, and be a part of the solution.
Simply stated, there are ever-evolving changes and new things that we should know about before we get busy “making space.” The absence of knowledge about the advances in technology and vehicle construction can cause and have caused catastrophic events at real-life extrication scenes.