By Patrick Varine
Tribune-Review
NEW KENSINGTON, Pa. — Fire drills aren’t just for school students.
For the men and women who fight fires on a regular basis, a drill is a chance to test out the logistics of your department’s response, to see what does and doesn’t work and to find out how to adjust your emergency procedures.
Members of four fire departments were doing just that on Saturday morning at Parnassus Manor in New Kensington, according to New Kensington Fire Chief Ed Saliba.
“The county housing authority would like us to run these drills once a year,” Saliba said. “It gives us an opportunity to set things up — we’ve had six fires at Parnassus Manor over the past 25 years, and you want to take what you learn from each one and put that into the response plan.”
Saturday’s drill was called in shortly after 9 a.m. and went out over the Westmoreland County 911 system as a third-floor apartment fire. By 9:15 a.m., the block was surrounded by trucks with ladders leading to multiple floors, firefighters providing ventilation and a small group of residents milling around outside trying to determine if there was really a fire.
“The guys here today are part of our pre-plan and know exactly where to stage,” Saliba said. “After a fire we had here three years ago, we started meeting and discussing the best setup for our initial response.”
Ideally, that involves coverage on all four sides of a building. That isn’t always possible — a future drill at the city’s Central Towers apartment complex will require a different plan, since the building is only accessible from three sides by a fire truck.
By 10 a.m., firefighters had huddled around Saliba on Main Street to break down everyone’s response, take feedback and answer questions.
Saliba likened the drills to professional sports teams’ practices.
“On game day, what they need to do comes automatically,” he said. “When that call is for real and there’s a working fire, your adrenaline is going and your training becomes very important.”
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