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LE MARS, Iowa (Iowa Media Wire) — Dozens of firefighters from around the Siouxland area, and beyond, spent their weekend learning and practicing what to do when commercial vehicles get into major accidents.
Starting on Friday, firefighters from Le Mars, Hinton, and Sioux City gathered outside the City of Le Mars with an organization called Crossroads Training to learn how to handle accidents with vehicles like semis and school buses.
“We spend the first day sitting up and building skills, so we give them a skill set, we teach them the skills that they need to be able to complete complex scenarios, and then the second day, we set up those complex scenarios and put them through those scenarios and allow them to practice those and be able to become proficient at it,” said John Shackelford, the owner of Crossroads Training.
Sunday was the final day for training, where firefighters put all their knowledge to the test.
“We have a concrete mixer overturned on a car, we have a school bus overturned on a car, we have a car underneath a semi, and they’re all smushed, smushed together in a very small area. So we’re going to work on in concert with the wreckers and the rescue personnel to support these vehicles. There’s a five-step process that we go through when we’re dealing with heavy vehicles on how we do the extra stations, and we’ll be working and setting those scenarios up. And then they have to work those scenarios to prove to us that they learned everything that we taught them on the first day,” said Shackelford.
On top of honing valuable skills, firefighters also get to work with equipment they don’t often get to, like a heavy wrecker.
“These trucks running up and down the road, they can be 80,000 plus, 96,000, 100,000 plus. A lot of these fire departments don’t have the equipment to be able to move that kind of weight, and if you get a vehicle that’s pinned in by a commercial vehicle, we’ve got heavy wrecker rotators that are capable of lifting 60 ton,” said Wood.
“The use of a heavy wrecker in an extrication scenario can save lives in multiple ways. A job that will take a fire department without a wrecker two to three hours to extract the patient can be done in 20 to 30 minutes with a wrecker. The capabilities of these rotating wreckers is unbelievable,” said Shackelford
Stockton Towing provided the many vehicles used for training.
“Had a few through donations, and then others are from in pounds that people don’t come back and claim that type of thing, so we’re able to keep those cars and then use those to be able to supply to the fire departments to assist in their training,” said Justin Wood, a heavy wrecker operator with Stockton Towing.
On top of local fire departments training this weekend, firefighters from Sioux Falls also made an hour-and-a-half drive to train.
“We do not get this a whole lot, so it is very valuable for everybody to hone their skills a little bit and get their hands on and actually see how these things cut apart, and they’re not like regular vehicles because you’re going to have the height difference on the semis. A school bus is also higher and bigger tires,” said Steve Schwarz, the assistant fire chief with Le Mars Fire Department.
Le Mars Assistant Fire Chief said this training can be applied in any town or city.
“Every community, no matter what, almost has school buses going through them to pick up kids drop off kids and whatever. So it is a very valuable time to learn how to extricate out of a bus for any town. It doesn’t matter who you are,” said Schwarz.