Brotherhood of Firemen

[Loony661]

Everyone here is going battery power with extrication equipment. I ran into the station tonight for a service call and noticed a shiny new battery Stihl chainsaw on the back table ready to be put in service. The winds of change.

Some background: we were the last department in the county to have purchased jaws, which we just got about 1.5 years ago. We don’t get many extrication calls, and if we did get one, we called for mutual aid from a neighboring dept about 10 miles away, in 3 different directions.

We would love the compact battery powered units, but it was a hard no when we saw the price, given the extremely low usage. So because a lot of dept’s are switching to battery, we were able to purchase this slightly used, nearly new, gas unit from the manufacturer for only a couple thousand dollars. The manufacturer also went through it completely, ensuring it would be trouble free. We demo’d it and decided this was the best route for us.

So now we try to train on it a few times a year to get familiar with the tools. We have the spreader, the cutter, and a mini extendable bar.

 

[Catbuster]

We did some indoor jaws training tonight. We have a gas power unit, so we set that outside and ran the hoses under the garage door. We took turns playing “Jenga” with the cribbing blocks, and then also everyone got a chance to try grabbing an egg and moving it from 1 traffic cone to another, about 12 feet away. It was fun. And everyone got involved. A lot of eggs didn’t make it, but a few survived!

Last fall we went from Amkus hydraulic tools to Hurst battery tools. They are a game changer. You can hear everything on scene now, and it’s so much less chaotic. If you had asked me about this stuff 15 years ago, I never thought I’d see this coming.

Everyone here is going battery power with extrication equipment. I ran into the station tonight for a service call and noticed a shiny new battery Stihl chainsaw on the back table ready to be put in service. The winds of change.

We put an MSA 220 on our field unit when we put it in service last spring. It’s okay… It’s left me wanting, but it’s a lot better than what was on it-no chainsaw.

 

[FederalQ]

Even here the need to use extrication is few and far between. Vehicles have become much safer in that respect but more prone to catch fire now than ever before after crashing.