Moses Lake firefighters learn the ropes

MOSES LAKE — Rescue Randy is having a bad day.

Randy, the Moses Lake Fire Department’s rescue dummy, is hanging upside down on the ladder about 15 feet above the ground on the Juniper Park water tower, stuck, while four Mose Lake firefighters carefully move around him, securing themselves with hooks and ropes as they prepare to pull him out and lower him to the ground.

“Communicate!” yells Dick Rice as he looks up from the ground. “Talk to each other!”

And they do. It’s slow work notes Rice, the owner of Alaska Rescue who has been helping to train Moses Lake firefighters for the last eight years, but this is training — a time to get things right.

“We’re working on advanced techniques,” Rice said. “There’s a high likelihood they’ll use these skills in this area.”

The MLFD’s technical rescue team has to do this once a year, according to Capt. Brandon Burns. They aren’t climbing very high up the water to give all of the 12 members of the MLFD’s technical rescue a chance to practice.

“The basis is ropes and knots and being able to secure, haul, and do all these types of things on an incident,” Burns said.

Two firefighters climb up and over Rescue Randy, going about 10 more feet, where they both secure themselves with two lines to the ladder and then slowly lower down two ropes to firefighters on the ladder below them.

It’s a struggle to get Randy dislodged, but once they do, the firefighters pull him up to get him clear of the ladder, and then start lowering him down.

Key to everything, even in a real rescue, is safety. Each firefighter secures himself with two lines, and they secure Rescue Randy with two lines as well.

And because this is training, it goes slowly. Rice makes sure to ask questions, give reminders, and have the firefighters check their decisions frequently.

“We have to use these skills for anything that has to do with water rescue,” Burns said. “Ice rescue, ropes are involved in that. Trench rescue, ropes are involved in that. Any other sort of rescue where they need to be tethered off the ground, it becomes a technical rescue, and not just a normal day on the job.”

Because there’s no telling when a call will demand a climb or a descent with a bag of ropes strapped to a firefighter’s back.

“It varies from year to year. It depends on the call,” Burns said. “When they’re building towers, we’ve gotta be trained to be able to rescue in case there’s an incident.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com