By Matt Lakin
Knoxville News-Sentinel
Copyright 2007 Knoxville News-Sentinel Co.
All Rights Reserved
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Step inside and say goodbye to sight.
Fumble through clouds of blinding, choking smoke in a place you’ve never been. Crawl across the floor as you carry 70 extra pounds of gear and equipment. Stumble over furniture. Squeeze through narrow spaces, some barely wide enough for the oxygen tank on your back.
Hurry up. A life could depend on you.
Thirty Knoxville Fire Department recruits got their first taste of that urgency Thursday during search-and-rescue drills at the KFD Training Center on Prosser Road.
“It’s definitely a challenge,” said Eric White, a 34-year-old recruit. “You’re going into a smoke-filled room completely blind. You’ve got to do everything by feel and touch.”
He and the others spent the day charging in and out of the smoke, some of it real and some of it from fog machines. They groped through the dark inside a plywood maze and felt their way up and down stairs inside makeshift buildings, hauling dummies that weighed up to 185 pounds.
“Searching for victims is the No. 1 thing for any fire department in the country,” KFD Capt. Chris Dyer said. “This is one of the most important things they’ll learn in the 28 weeks that they’re here.”
Even though the recruits knew the danger wasn’t real, that didn’t keep their adrenaline from pumping.
“It shows you what you can do when you have to,” said Luke Vandergriff, 19. “You can feel exhausted, but when you finally find the victim, it’s like you’ve just had a twohour break. You’re ready to go again.”
Instructors hope to prepare the class members for the risks awaiting them outside the training ground. Two Knoxville firefighters suffered severe burns fighting an apartment fire Jan. 29, and three more were hurt when they became trapped inside a burning warehouse during the McClung warehouses fire Feb. 7.
“The danger’s limitless,” KFD Capt. Steve Mitchell said. “We introduce them to it in baby steps. You don’t know what people have in the buildings or in their houses. You don’t know the floor plan or the layout. The floor could fail. Things could fall on top of you, trapping you. This is nothing like the real deal, but it gets them prepared for that.”
Master Firefighter James Rickett, one of the men injured in the January fire, helped put the recruits through their paces Thursday. He and the other instructors stressed the basics: counting rooms, following the wall, forming a mental grid of the building’s layout, staying with a partner and watching the air supply.
“We stay low and we’re quick,” Mitchell said. “You get in there, get them and get out.
“You have to trust your equipment, your training and the men you’re with,” he said. “It’s a brotherhood. We eat together, we sleep together, and I count on the men with me to get me out if they need to.”