EMERGENCY SERVICES TRAINING CENTER
CALCON HOOK ROAD&TRIBBETT AVENUE
SHARON HILL, PA 19079
PHONE: 610-237-8630
FAX 610-583-8402
E-MAIL: mail@delcoestc.org
WEB SITE: www.delcoestc.org
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NEW DRILL TOWER READY FOR USE
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The 5-story drill tower has been completed and is ready for use. The tower has interior and exterior standpipes, interior and exterior stairs, windows on each floor, balconies, ship type hatches, tie-offs for rope rescue, and vertical descent openings in each floor.
The tower is designed to be used for smoke evolutions, ground ladders, aerial apparatus, high rise hose work, rescue practice, rope training, stand pipe training, technical rescue training, and search and rescue drills using Rosco smoke only.
The tower is another example of cooperation between the Firemen's Association and County Government teaming up to support the Emergency Responders of Delaware County. Without the leadership of the Firemen's Association and the County Council matching the DCFA $70,000.00 contribution, this project would not have been possible.
The Board of Fire and Life Safety has contributed by providing construction management, installing the electrical systems in the tower, dry stand pipes, and paving 40,000 square feet of the lot surrounding the tower. Any Emergency response organization that would like to use the new tower should contact the Training Center at 610-237-8630.
THE TRAINING CENTER ADDS AND EXPANDS FACILITIES
In the last six months the Board of Fire and Life Safety has added a flammable liquids fire simulator consisting of a 16 foot diameter steel tank and the necessary propane piping and valves. Training classes and fire companies can now practice with water, foam, and dry chemical extinguishing agents. The environmental concerns associated with class B flammable liquids have been eliminated.
A 16-foot diameter steel tank for drafting and pump practice is now available. There are multiple intake ports to discharge water back into the tank so that the pump operator can flow the maximum amount of water with minimum manpower. Hand lines can also be lashed to the tank to reduce the need for manpower.
The Board has purchased an 85' Snorkel from Station 53. This unit will be used for various fire training classes and facility maintenance. The new 5000 square foot garage to house the fire apparatus and community service vehicles is 80% complete. When the garage is finished most of the items stored in the practical skills area will be moved out to free-up more training space.
Westemp Panels have been purchased to complete the lining of the first and second floors of the Burn Building. This will allow attack crews to use either direct or indirect attack techniques. These panels will also help to extend the life of the structure.
The sprinkler lab that was funded by the Harper family in memory of their father (see the previous issue of the ESTC newsletter) is complete.
The Board will also be purchasing $5,000.00 worth of tools and equipment to support the training. This is in addition to the equipment donated by Lima Fire Company, Prospect Park Fire Company, Folcroft Fire Company, and Briarcliff Fire Company. If your department has any surplus equipment contact us at 610-237-8630.
VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT www.delcoestc.org
BOARD OF FIRE AND LIFE SAFETY TO DEDICATE FACILITIES
The Delaware County Board of Fire and Life Safety cordially invites all of the emergency responders in Delaware County to attend the dedication ceremonies for the new 5-story drill tower and the Thomas Harper Memorial Sprinkler Lab. The dedications will be held at the Emergency Services Training Center on October 7, 1999 beginning at 18:30 hours.
In addition to the dedication, attendees are invited to tour the entire facility and discuss any training related issues with our staff. Refreshments will be served following the ceremonies.
NFPA ANNOUNCES "FIRE DRILLS: THE GREAT ESCAPE!"
AS FIRE PREVENTION WEEK 1999 THEME.
OCTOBER 3-9, 1999
As the official sponsor of Fire Prevention Week for more than 70 years, the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) announced at its Fall meeting in Atlanta, GA, that "Fire Drills: The Great Escape!" will be the theme for Fire Prevention Week 1999, October 3-9. If this theme sounds familiar, that's because it is. Launched one year ago by NFPA, it is a three-year public awareness initiative aimed at increasing the number of households that have developed and practiced a home fire escape plan.
"As a public awareness organization, NFPA knows that truly changing the public's attitude and behavior toward home fire escape planning and practice requires a long-term commitment from us, as well as fire departments and safety advocates across North America," says Meri-K Appy, NFPA's vice president of public education. "By working collaboratively to communicate consistent home fire escape messages and activities over time, we expect that more and more people will be influenced by those messages and, ultimately, become safer from home fires."
The results of the Fire Prevention Week 1998 home escape-planning contest are testament to the positive impact of "The Great Escape" even after its first year. In fact, the home fire escape planning entries submitted to NFPA by U.S. and Canadian fire departments reveal that nearly 250,000 people participated in the fire drill and contest.
"I couldn't be happier with the results of this last year's campaign," says Ms. Appy. "Now that we know we're on the right track, NFPA plans to continue improving the effectiveness of "The Great Escapes', so that participation and enthusiasm are even more widespread this October."
Essentially, the components of Fire Prevention Week 1999 will be the same as the '98 campaign: With the support and help of fire departments, schools, and other groups throughout the U.S. and Canada, NFPA will coordinate a unified North American fire drill on Wednesday October 6, 1999 at 19:00, and home fire escape planning contest. Visit the NFPA web site for details.
"Arthur" and Fire Prevention Week 1999: Marc Brown, creator of Arthur, has agreed to partner with NFPA on this year's Fire Prevention Week campaign. "This is a great job for Arthur. Our mission is helping kids and families, and we're delighted to be a part of NFPA's Fire Prevention Week 1999," says Mr. Brown.
Well-known and loved by children and parents all over the world, Arthur is the star of television's number one children's show, with more than 16 million weekly viewers. In addition, more than 24 million Arthur books have been sold over the past 20 years, and consistently place at the top of Publisher's Weekly children's best selling list.
"It's a true honor to be given the opportunity to feature Arthur in this year's campaign materials," Ms. Appy concludes. "The Arthur audience- primarily young children- is the same age group fire departments and other safety groups target during Fire Prevention Week. It's simply a perfect match."
Anyone interested in more information about this year's Fire Prevention Week activities or programs should visit the NFPA's web site at www.nfpa.org or visit their family site at www.sparky.org.
THE DELAWARE COUNTY FIREMEN'S ASSOCIATION IS CHANGING HOW IT SUPPORTS FIRE SAFETY EDUCATION
The Delaware County Firemen's Association (DCFA) has decided to change its policy regarding fire safety education. In the past the DCFA has maintained a supply of material that local departments could take and distribute during fire safety activities. The supply has been depleted and the Executive Board has decided not to replace the materials. Several reasons for this decision are that only a few departments regularly use the material, it is impossible to gauge how many of what items to purchase, and it is difficult to keep the materials current.
The DCFA will continue to make the puppet stage available as well as the U.B. READY costume. The DCFA in cooperation with the Board of Fire and Life Safety will continue to add to our library of reference materials and fire safety videotapes, which are available for loan to local fire safety programs. Contact the Training Center at 610-237-8630 for a list of titles available.
"TRAINING ON THE ROAD" A SUCCESS
By: Kerby Kerber
The Delaware County Emergency Services Training Center began offering courses off campus in early 1998. The popularity of this program has continued to increase over the last year to the point that almost 50% of our programs are delivered off site.For the department or district training officers, local delivery of training allows for efficient use of time and scheduling flexibility. This reduces the need to take the company(s) out of service, students are in a familiar environment, local equipment and sites can be used for practical evolutions, and programs can be scheduled to coincide with regular training sessions. All of this adds up to a more user friendly training system. If there are no sites locally to use for the practical portions of the class, the Training Center can be used and only the classroom sessions will be done locally.
In addition to the regular courses, the Training Center will develop special programs to meet the needs of districts or departments. It is possible to bring in specific programs or instructors from outside the area as has been done in the past. We also offer drill programs that allow local training officers to keep their company drills fresh and provide a new face to present the program.
The Training Center staff and instructors are ready to discuss your company or district's specific training requirements. Through communication and cooperation we can continue to meet the training needs of the local Emergency response community. The Training Center thanks all of the departments that have cooperated in making this program a success, and we hope that more organizations will take advantage of it in the coming year.
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION COURSE
The Training Center has tentatively scheduled a methods of instruction course for late fall. This program is required to become an instructor at the Training Center as well as the State Fire Academy. Anyone with 3 years of experience in the fire service who would like to be considered for participation should contact Kerby Kerber at 610-237-8630 for additional information.
HOW WE DIE- DEATH OF A FIREFIGHTER
By Glenn Usdin
(Reprinted from the New Jersey Fire Focus March/April 1999 issue)
Firefighters don't die in peaceful scenes right out of the latest tear-jerking movie, with the patient's life oozing away as the immediate family gently sobs and watches as their loved one goes to a better place. It ain't that pretty for us. When we go in the line of duty, it's cruel and painful and far too ugly for most of us to even imagine. Not very many of us want to re-create the last living moments of our fellow firefighters who have given the ultimate sacrifice. But for that very reason, our own inability to come to terms with the manner and reasons that our fellow firefighters have perished while performing their assigned tasks, it is so vital that we study and analyze the cause of how we die in this profession.
We die fearfully, hopelessly lost in the myriad of rooms of building surrounded by flames and smoke, separated by mere yards (that for all intents and purposes could be miles away) from the nearest hoseline our air supply gone, choking and vomiting into unconsciousness, while crews are unable to mount a rescue attempt, if they were even aware that we were missing or trapped. Sometimes we even drown in the water that fills the basement that we have fallen into, without our colleagues even knowing that the thousands of gallons of water they pour on the fire is rapidly choking our life away.
We die in unthinkable pain from the massive burns after being trapped in a flashover, first an instant flash of light as bright as an atomic bomb explosion, then an overall scorch so intense we roast in the flames as our skin chars and our nerves are destroyed, our breathing apparatus harness and face piece and protective clothing melting away, allowing the superheated atmosphere to engulf our breathing passages and burn our throat shut, and leaving our burnt carcass lying seared to the floor like any other bit of fallen fire debris.
We die in fright as sections of wall and roof collapse on us without warning, massive loads of thousands of pounds of wood and bricks and metal and concrete, crushing us, tearing apart our skin, our bones, and finally exploding our internal organs and suffocating us as we bleed out internally, just seconds and feet away from the relative safety of a collapse zone never set up or intentionally disregarded.
We die instantly from a massive cardiac event that comes on so quickly that we don't even have time to signal for help. An instant flash of chest pain, and then a sudden collapse as our diseased heart's weakened muscle just vibrates and wriggles out of control, pumping not even a single drop to our brain. Not an entire battalion of nearby paramedics can breathe or medicate or even shock a single moment of life back into us.
We die on the express lanes of the highway, fighting a lousy car fire at 2:00 in the morning, as a drunken driver nods off and his 5,000 lb. car plows into us without even a hint of braking action, crushing our helpless torso from the 45 MPH impact and folding the back step of our engine around the shape of our broken body. (Yet we still proudly drink too much on our own time).
We die a sad 100 or so every year, and the way that we die has not changed a single bit from the time that organized firefighting began. The numbers of us who perish have declined in recent years, but so have the number of fires that we fight (Oh, remember the good old days when we had lots more fire activity!). We still need to lower the number significantly more. Firefighting, an art, not an exact science, is still a very dangerous occupation. But we can, and must, manage our risk.
Let's ask the widows of the latest batch of 100 firefighters who died in the line of duty a very simple question, "Was the death of your firefighter husband worth the building he was trying to save?" Anybody want to answer that one? If you, or those under your command, can not justify the loss of human life, the lives of firefighters, for the sake of a burning building, then we must address the means and methods to carefully manage the risk to avoid loss of our precious lives.
Make no mistake about it, we are not dying as we try to save women and children trapped in the bedrooms of their homes. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are dying in commercial structures and vacant unoccupied homes, warehouses and tenements, caught in fire and collapse situations that were, or should have been, recognizable for their hazards to our lives. There is no glory to give your life to save (or make) a parking lot. More often than not, the public will not even stop for a moment to pause at the spot that a firefighter has perished. If our customers don't recognize a need to die for their building why should we?
Tom Brennan, perhaps the finest tactical thinker our fire service has ever seen, showed our company a slide of a single family dwelling during a drill one afternoon. He described the scene to our group, saying that a family was inside sleeping before the fire broke out. "What is this building?" he asks, and the answer quickly comes back from the group, "An occupied structure!" Then Tom puts the same slide back up, and simply states, "Same building, but this time everyone is 100% confirmed to be out of the home before the FD arrival now what is this building" Puzzled looks around the room until Tom declares in his wonderful New York tone "A piece of ****, are you willing to loose your life for this?" Think hard about your answer. Your life (and the lives of those who serve with you) depends on your correct response.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) now investigates every firefighter fatality in the U.S., and issues a comprehensive report based upon their investigation of these fires. You can access these reports directly from the NIOSH WEBSITE at www.cdc.gov/niosh/firehome.html. These reports are sad reading for those of us in the fire business.
While each of these reports condenses into a few pages a whole series of tragic events that led to the death of a precious firefighter, they are nonetheless an important tool for us to use. These investigative summaries can never capture the human side of the tragedy of these events, the feeling of hopelessness and failure on the part of those involved, and the unbelievable sequence of events gone wrong that lead to a line-of-duty death. The simple fires are sometimes the most tragic. Please, be Safe.
ALERT!! SCBA CYLINDER TESTING REQUIREMENTS MAY CHANGE
The Department of Transportation is proposing to change the test procedures for all air cylinders that have a dot number (ALL SCBA). Among the areas that should concern the fire service are,
1. Metal cylinder re-qualification, testing, would be based on external inspection only. Internal inspection, which detects most problems, would be eliminated. The new regulations would replace hydrostatic testing with ultrasonic testing, which does not detect flaws in flat bottom and hemispherical ends of metal cylinders.
2. Composite cylinders would be condemned after exposure to temperatures above 350 degrees F. Most structure fires and some flammable liquid fires will easily expose the SCBA to temperatures well above 350F. Does this mean that the fire service now has disposable cylinders where we replace a cylinder after use instead of refilling it?
3. Burst disk activation pressure would be increased. This is a concern since it may lead to cylinder failure that could injure or kill firefighters.
4. Cylinders would be labeled with the test pressure instead of the service pressure. If a fire fighter saw a label on a cylinder for 6000 psi he might think that this is the fill pressure and over pressurize the cylinder. If the cylinder is labeled it should be with the working pressure.
The time for public comment (That means the Fore Service too) has been extended until the end of September. The fire service needs to address this very important issue before the regulations are changed (for the Worse), it will be much harder after they become effective. For additional information contact Christine at the IAFC 703-273-9815. Time is running out so make your voice heard.
CRITICAL INCIDENT STRESS MANAGEMENT TEAM
If anyone needs to contact them the new address is,
Delaware County CISM
Department of Emergency Services
C/o Lynn Ewing
360 North Middletown Road
Media, PA 19063 610-892-8133
CONGRATULATIONS
The Delaware County Firemen's Association is pleased to announce that the 1999 George T. Lewis Scholarship has been presented to Stephen Kerber from Broomall Fire Company. Stephen will attend the University of Maryland beginning this fall majoring in Fire Protection Engineering.
Anyone that would like information about applying for the George T. Lewis Scholarship should contact Walter R. Omlor Jr. at 610-891-5317.
THE ESTC PURCHASING PAGE
The Emergency Services Training Center will soon have page set up on our website that is available to any department that wants to post information about a large purchase. Things like turnout gear, SCBA, hose, or any big-ticket item. The page is intended to act as a clearinghouse so that other emergency organizations can see if there is an opportunity to make bulk purchases at a reduced cost. If your organization would like to post information on the purchasing page call or E-mail the Training Center.
"On the fire ground be real careful who you give water to, the wrong firefighter with a charged line is a whole lot like a chimpanzee with a hand grenade."
Chief P. Layton
LEPC ADDS ITS SUPPORT TO THE TRAINING CENTER
The Delaware County Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) chaired by Ed Doyle Ph.D. has made a significant contribution to the training of the emergency responders of Delaware County. In addition to funding the Hazardous Materials Awareness, Hazardous Materials Operations, and Terrorism courses the LEPC is providing funding to purchase materials to support the operations level program.
For those who are not aware through the support of the LEPC the three programs mentioned above are provided at no cost to the emergency responders of Delaware County. All three courses are available for delivery at county fire stations by contacting the Training Center.
In order to meet the NFPA standards for Firefighter I and Firefighter II certification the awareness and operations programs are included in the curriculum. Without the financial support of the LEPC the cost of these programs would be substantially higher. The emergency responders of Delaware County are fortunate to have this financial support.
BEHIND THE SCENES AT 9-1-1
By John Eller
Many people watch cop shows on television, some are realistic, such as "COPS", but most are not. Based on numerous television adventures, a cop's job seems to be an exciting way of life, when realistically it's not, unless you work in a crime-ridden city. Most popular television cop shows, except "9-1-1" do not show what goes on behind the scenes at the 9-1-1 centers where the call-takers, dispatchers, and a host of support personnel, dispatch police, fire, and ambulance personnel to the scene, and then attempt to guide them through the emergency by dispatching support personnel and emergency equipment when needed. As a result of the establishment of the Citizens Police Academy in Brookhaven, a visit to the 9-1-1 Emergency Center in Lima, is an absolute must, so that the citizens can really see behind the scenes. Most emergency response begins with a telephone call to the 9-1-1 center.
The technology that is utilized in the operation of the 9-1-1 center is mind boggling. Citizens who see it for the first time are absolutely amazed at what takes place in the center. The 9-1-1 center in Delaware County is located in Lima, PA. The center is located in the old Watkins Building, which sits between the Pennsylvania State Police Laboratory, and the Delaware County Juvenile Detention Center on Middletown Road, PA Route 352.
The center handles approximately 1,000 calls per day. The average shift is comprised of 20 to 22 personnel, including a supervisor. The Delco. 9-1-1 Center services 35 municipal police agencies, 76 fire departments, and 46 ambulance and paramedic units, that are associated with the fire departments. Delaware County is 184 square miles and has a population of approximately 547,000 citizens. There are 8 hospitals in the county.
Inside the communications room there are 6 to 8 call takers working at their consoles. There are 6 sector consoles, with dispatchers, who handle the various sectors of police departments in the county. There are 3 dispatchers operating the fire board consoles, while another console is dedicated to the Commonwealth Law Enforcement Assistance Network (CLEAN), where police officers obtain wanted person, license and registration information. This console is a direct link to Harrisburg and can access the National Information Crime Computer in Washington, DC. Calls are received, logged, and dispatched within minutes.
This first class operation, employing approximately 100 personnel under the direction of Edwin Truitt and his capable staff of supervisors, technicians, and trainers. Those who see the "behind the scenes" personnel leave the facility in amazement, and consider themselves very fortunate to live in Delaware County.
COMPUTER CORNER
By Nancy White
E-mail Dos and Don'ts
Like any communication medium, electronic mail can be used well or poorly. Here are some helpful hints that will assist in avoiding time consuming and annoying problems:
Don't use e-mail:
