By Cindy Wolff
The Commercial Appeal
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — One word a firefighter doesn’t want to hear when he’s about to step off a ledge and be lowered 30 feet to the ground:
“Whoa!”
Twenty-one Collierville firefighters spent an afternoon this week on a bridge on Houston Levee over the Wolf River learning how to tie ropes, use pulleys and rappel off a bridge.
Firefighter Kerry Smith was the first to go. He stood atop the bridge over the Wolf River just north of St. George’s School ready for that step off. Other firefighters joked with him.
“They can just learn from your mistakes,” one quipped.
Smith was snug in his harness with nylon ropes connected to the front and back. Others huddled around him ready to watch him go. He took one foot off the ledge before he was stopped.
“That’s not what you want to hear just as you’re about to go,” Smith said.
The rappelling training equipment is stored in one of several trailers that are dispersed around the county. The equipment is part of a grant called the Urban Area Security Initiative administered by Homeland Security, said Collierville Fire Chief Jerry Crawford.
Each trailer is for a different rescue scenario: structural collapse, trench rescue, confined space rescue and swift water rescue.
The municipalities take turns using the training equipment so firefighters in each area can become certified in specific types of rescue.
With traffic whizzing by and the wind blowing about 5 mph, the firefighters learned a lesson from Lt. Joe Rutledge’s trip down: They couldn’t rely on shouting commands to each other.
The men who lowered Rutledge were yelling for the men feeding the rope to slow down. They didn’t hear. Rutledge sped to the ground like he’d been thrown off the bridge.
“He’s got his 30 years in, but he’s not ready to go yet,” firefighter Bob Cannon joked to the men controlling the rope’s speed.
“We can’t hear a thing you’re saying,” the men lowering the rope told Cannon.
He went to the fire truck and retrieved two radios so they could communicate better.
Rutledge came up the hill after the swift drop.
“I thought I was on a zip line,” he said. “I’ve never gone down that fast.”
Lt. Joe Lee Rape, who was in charge of the exercise, worked with four certified instructors to teach the men how to tie off the ropes using figure-eight knots.
It took more than an hour to teach the knot-tying and to get things sorted.
“If this were a real situation it would take maybe 10 minutes,” Rape said. “This is slower because we want them to understand why each thing they do is important for the safety of the firemen and the victim.”
The training also includes lowering a stretcher down with one of the firefighters riding up as a victim.
“We’ll have to draw straws on that one,” Rape said.
Copyright 2011 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.