Will the old fire hall set to be demolished fairly soon, the Airdrie Fire Department is taking advantage of using it for training while they can.
Deputy Chief Operations of the Airdrie Fire Department, Garth Rabel, explains what the fire department has been using it for.
“We had the opportunity to use the facility to go inside, do search and rescue hose evolutions, radio communications, practice our Mayday procedures, just lots of real valuable practical training and command training that we're doing as crews.”
A couple of Airdrie’s firefighters are also members of Canada Task Force 2 and on Tuesday, Canada Task Force 2 was at the old fire hall to do some training with the Airdrie Fire Department.
Canada Task Force 2 is a provincial response group for Alberta out of Calgary.
“They came out, we did a joint exercise, very much about technical rescues, shoring, communications, use of a search dog, and they just utilized that with our team in the event that something were to record where we'd have to respond in as a coordinated group.”
To be more specific about their training together, they practiced a scenario where a small plane crashed into the top of the building.
“The team came together; did [the] search and rescue, safely located folks that were trapped with the use of the dog, and then did heavy extrication: so, lifting, shoring, patient packaging and removal. It was all through a centralized command system.”
Rabel finished off by saying if an incident was to occur, this training would help them be more seamless in their delivery of service in a real-world incident.
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