Being prepared

LAKE CITY — Firefighters walk into many different situations and need to know how to quickly assess the situation and get to work with life-saving actions.

The Lake City Fire Department, in conjunction with Ag Partners in Lake City, took part in an agriculture-related training Aug. 18 to teach its team about the actions needed to effectively perform a grain bin rescue. Fire Chief Dan Patterson, who has been with the department for 15 years, said this type of training is important.

“We’ve definitely had a few recoveries out of grain bins, fighting fires in them and around them over the years,” Patterson said. “Those types of agricultural emergencies are definitely in the forefront of our minds because they can be high risk.”

Nineteen members of the Lake City Fire Department participated in the event, which allowed the firefighters to practice life-saving tactics involving grain bins. Conversations were had about when to enter a bin through the top and when to cut a hole in the side, Patterson said.

During the training, the fire department set up its aerial ladder over the opening on top of a grain bin. Firefighters used a rope system that was anchored to trucks on the ground. From there, they climbed the grain bin and clipped themselves to the established rope system, making their way into the grain bin. There was a second team of firefighters atop the grain bin to serve as anchor points for added safety. The ropes were used to lower a firefighter into the grain bin to make contact with a victim and secure them to that rope system before lifting them out of the bin.

“We wanted to make sure that our safety systems are redundant and everyone understands them so that it becomes muscle memory for our team, so when we get to a scene, we can get to work,” Patterson said. “We discussed our equipment (and) which areas are safe for us to tie off to and can support our weight.”

The fire department ran through the rescue scenario multiple times to give everyone multiple perspectives of how each aspect works.

“We have operations going on 100 feet in the air, operations going on 140 feet in the air, and operations going on the ground,” Patterson said. “So, there’s a lot of different aspects where our leadership structure and our command structure gets involved in a scene like that.”

Members of the fire department and Ag Partners gave positive feedback from the day’s events.

“They really liked it,” Patterson said. “It’s not something you get to do every day, and to be able to do it well, efficiently and safely is important. There’s a lot of camaraderie involved when everybody takes their job seriously and we accomplish our goals.”

Patterson, along with Lake City Fire Department training officers Jacob Schumacher and Dan Cox and firefighters Chris Tourney, Brian Smith, Dave Glomski and Derek Nibbe, coordinated the training event with Mark Ryan from Ag Partners to simulate the potentially dangerous situation.

“It all stemmed from a conversation we had with Ag Partners about our technical rescue experience and what we can do,” Patterson said. “We walked around their facility, and they pointed out a lot of different places that are hazardous that we could potentially need to be rescuing somebody from.”

Lake City Fire Department has partnered with Ag Partners as a training site in the past, but this is the first grain bin rescue training event.

“This was a great opportunity to experience,” Patterson said. “With harvest coming right around the corner here, it was definitely appropriate. Everyone was so accommodating and great to work with.”