Complex challenges in Moses Lake Fire Department training

MOSES LAKE — The task facing the Moses Lake Fire Department was complicated. The MLFD was summoned to an apartment complex where all the exits ended up in interior hallways. The fire could – and did – spread to the garbage container and the car in the apartment parking lot. And as crews battled the blaze a firefighter was disabled inside.

Complex. And that was the point – it was the department’s annual training exercise.

Acting MLFD Chief Brett Bastian said the training involves all off-duty personnel and dispatchers from the Multi-Agency Communications Center (MACC). For 2016 the exercise also used the Life Flight helicopter stationed in Moses Lake.

Bastian said the training was planned as a “mass casualty fire,” casualties in this case being injuries. The “apartment building” was actually the training tower behind the fire department.

The training involves smoke bombs rather than actual fire. The bombs “really obscure the inside of a structure,” Bastian said.

The problem firefighters were asked to solve involved a building where occupants would have trouble getting outside. Four Moses Lake High School students played victims trapped by the flames, suffering burns and smoke inhalation. Because an apartment building would have a parking lot and a garbage container, firefighters were forced to deal with those also.

In addition, “we did a mayday drill,” Bastian said. That’s a situation where a firefighter is injured inside the building. “How we deployed rescue teams inside the structure.”

Some training, like the mayday drill, is required every year, Bastian said. The goal of the rest was twofold, he said, the first being to identify where the department might need more focused training. The second was the opportunity to do a “real time drill with other agencies without tying up emergency dispatch.” (Two MACC dispatchers played their parts using hand-held radios.)

The department’s EMS personnel were tasked with treating “patients” at the scene, and readying at least one for transport by Life Flight. And just to make it more interesting, the Life Flight chopper actually showed up. The training is “as real as we can do it,” Bastian said.

All off-duty firefighters, 28 in all, participated in the training, he said, along with the dispatchers and the three-person Life Flight crew. The training wasn’t quite finished – crews put out a car and garbage container fire, and rescued a victim from a smoky building.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.