EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series about training with the firefighters of East Jefferson Fire-Rescue, Jefferson County’s largest fire protection district.
East Jefferson Fire-Rescue, responds to more than 3,000 calls a year including medical emergencies, car crashes and structure fires.
The district covers more than 10,000 residents in an area from Port Townsend to Chimacum.
East Jefferson Fire-Rescue operates a local residency program where firefighters and paramedics are trained throughout the course of a year to become career emergency services workers.
Residents in the program range in age from 18 to 35. When the program is completed, they are either hired at East-Jefferson Fire Rescue or continue to work in a part-time role until they find permanent employment elsewhere.
PORT TOWNSEND — East Jefferson Fire-Rescue Assistant Chief Ted Krysinski claims he can train me to enter a house fire with him — no thrilling heroics required.
“Sometimes people expect Superman when we show up,” said Krysinski, who is in charge of the district’s training curriculum.
“I guess in some situations that might be the case, but you don’t have to be a superhero.
“We can teach you how to enter a fire with us if you go through the proper training and learn to use the gear correctly.”
So that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
East Jefferson Fire-Rescue has extended an offer to train me as a media observer in its district. After going through the proper class work, medical exams and equipment drills, I’ll be allowed to join live fire training exercises, rescue operation drills and even real-life, honest-to-goodness fires that take place in the district — as an observer only, of course.
“You won’t fight fires; you won’t enter by yourself,” Krysinski said on my first day of instruction.
“But you will go from someone observing the fire from behind the line to entering a building with trained firefighters.
“It will take you from observing at a distance to seeing what we do firsthand.”
For me, this isn’t an exercise in emulating the work these men and women do on a daily basis. I won’t be training to save lives, I won’t be operating a hose, and I won’t be making tough decisions in the middle of a house fire.
What I will be is an eye for the public. Sticking with the superhero analogy, I will get a chance to stand on the shoulders of these supermen and give people a chance to view something I hope they otherwise never have to see — the heart of a fire.
But this is also about more than pretty pictures in the paper.
This will give me a chance to tell the stories of the men and women who do this job: the 35-year-old carpenter finishing the residency program, the lifelong volunteers and the chiefs who remember 28-hour shifts fighting structure fires and who are ready to do it again.
“We can train you,” Krysinski said to me last week.
“We would be happy to have you, but it’s obviously up to you if you want to do it.”
Of course the answer was, “Yes.”
More like Batman
To be honest, the Superman perception is a little off the mark. A more accurate superhero comparison with these firefighters would probably be Batman.
They don armor against the elements, sport gadgets allowing them to breathe in unlivable conditions and follow a precise battle plan against a destructive force — plus they are very much human.
“In a way, we are kind of like superheroes, but there is a lot of planning and a lot of precautions involved,” Krysinski said.
“All of this training is based around making sure you go home to your family at the end of the day.”
Krysinski began my training with the breathing apparatus and fire gear.
I admit in the past I have mistakenly called the gear “a costume.” It’s a mistake I won’t repeat.
Some 60 pounds of gear are draped over my body and strapped onto my back. A large tank of oxygen is hooked up to a mask, which is then sealed to my face.
“It’s going to be a whole other world in there,” Krysinski said.
He’s not kidding.
The jacket alone feels like a hot, sweaty coat of armor. In many ways it is, as the material can resist flames and insulate against temperatures more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Your current vision is some 270 angular degrees side-to-side. Put a fire mask on and you cut that down to 110 degrees side-to-side.
But it’s a welcome exchange for keeping flame, embers and chemical filled smoke out of your face and lungs.
The breathing is the strangest part. A rebreather device between the mask and the oxygen tank regulates the flow of clean air.
It seals the mask to the face and keeps air from the toxic outside environment from entering your lungs. It’s a difficult transition from passively breathing to actively sucking in air through a diaphragm controlling the intake of air.
Training Lt. Chris Kauzlarich said if you are breathing normally, you have about 20 minutes of air in that tank. However, if your breathing is labored you have about six minutes of clean air.
“Can you clear a house and check every room in six minutes?” Krysinski asked.
Suiting up in all the gear for the first time is enough to make my breathing labored just standing there. The answer to his question is obviously, “No.”
“But eventually, yes, you could,” he said.
“With the right training.”
Crash course
The single-day crash course in correctly donning the gear and learning to breathe in a controlled environment obviously doesn’t encompass “the right training.”
I still have a few more steps until I can walk into a fire, but Krysinski said it won’t take long.
I still need to pass a physical examination, get fitted for proper gear, train with a partner, whom I will “shadow” in a live fire and work through a training scenario in which I will learn how to enter, stay out of the way and evacuate. Plus, I have to prove that I can stay calm inside a burning building.
And admittedly, I still need some more work with the rebreather device.
When I put the mask on the second time, I incorrectly hook up the hose from the oxygen tank.
With the mask sealed on my face and the diaphragm on the mask not opening, it quickly becomes obvious I have no air to breathe. In a fire, this could be a fatal mistake.
Before Kauzlarich can help me open the diaphragm, I switch a valve on the mask, opening the free flow of clean, fresh air from the tank.
“You didn’t remove the mask,” Kauzlarich says, smiling.
“You remembered something from the training.”
In a fire, if the diaphragm fails and I yank off the mask, the result would likely be fatal.
The free flow switch is a fail-safe so that doesn’t happen. Switching the valve allows air into the mask directly without use of the rebreather.
Krysinski said the chemical-laced smoke created in a burning house isn’t like the television shows where someone passes out and then gets CPR.
“You suck in the smoke from some burning chemicals and you die,” he said.
“There is no coming back from it.”
Kauzlarich is laughing, but he says he’s impressed with my memory of the free flow switch.
“Not bad,” Kauzlarich said.
“I think we might get you into a fire yet.”
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Reporter Erik Hidle can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at erik.hidle@peninsuladailynews.com.
