It is not every day that the residents along Elora Street see a car crash into a house, but on Monday night, that was only part of the spectacle.
An empty home was the scene of a mock accident, part of a training exercise for volunteer firefighters of Elora Station 60, of the Centre Wellington Fire Rescue Department (CWFRD).
“This is a new exercise for them. It’s the first extrication into a house,” said Larry Bolen, Chief Training Officer, with the CWFRD.
Approximately 22 volunteer fire fighters participated in the call that was dispatched by Bolen as a 2am emergency call.
By creating a scenario in the middle of the night Bolen explains it suggests that in a real situation, a family could be sleeping in the house.
“The team will have to assess the situation, find a victim in the vehicle and perform a search and rescue to stabilize another victim located somewhere in the home.”
While neighbours gathered to watch, three trucks from Elora arrived on the scene to find a four-door Saturn vehicle driven into the front corner of the home, with smoke billowing out of the house and an oil tank located on the side of the home, less than two feet from the impact site.
“They will have to consider the oil tank, but also consider that in this area, most homes use natural gas. These are all issues to factor in to how they approach the scene,” Bolen said.
“The IC, or Incident Commander, will have to shout out the orders,” he explains. “He will break the team into segments.”
Jason Shepherd took on the IC role immediately.
“Our most important thing is communication,” said Bolen, as he watched the fire fighters set to their task, with two men entering the home, others taking to ladders to open windows to open the air and others assessing the perimeter, all under the careful watch of fire safety team members, Bolen and CWFRD Fire Chief Brad Patton.
“We look for what works and what doesn’t work, so we can see the big picture of what’s involved in a situation like this,” Patton said.
“We expect this take approximately an hour,” Bolen said.
A lighting crew set up to provide a better view of the situation, and the Jaws of Life, a 60-pound hydraulic rescue tool, was used in the vehicle extrication.
“They are pulling the trunk apart, pulling the victim out from the back of the vehicle,” said Bolen, explaining the nature of the crash required careful access not only to the victim in the driver’s seat, but also concern for the foundation of the house, damaged in the crash.
In less than an hour, the team performed all duties in the extrication exercise to the high standards of both Patton and Bolen.
“They’ve done really well,” Bolen said. “They broke off into sectors, they located the victim on the second floor, extracted the other victim from the car, and worked together. They did a really good job.”
Although the Fergus and Elora stations often perform training exercises as one unit, the extrication scenario was divided between the two stations to make it a more manageable exercise.
Fergus performed their training exercise on Sept. 26, at home on Gordon Street in Fergus.
The vacant homes in both scenarios were donated by Jennifer Hunter of Jennark Homes. The Centre Wellington building company is planning to construct new homes at these locations later this year.
