Fire Officer Outlines Some Lifesaving Training
Basseterre, St. Kitts, August 30, 2023 (ZIZ Newsroom): Fire Officers within the St. Kitts and Nevis Fire and Rescue Services undergo rigorous training that can potentially save lives.
This is according to Fire Sub-Station Officer, Timothy Martin during ZIZ radio’s programme “Fire Talk” on Tuesday(August 29, 2023).
He said one of the types of training they receive is rope work training which is used in rescue situations involving hikers or rescuing persons from a high structure.
“Persons that go hiking, they get injured, you, cannot easily get them down. We sometimes have to put them in a basket. Now holding the basket on its own and getting them down sometimes poses a lot of challenges. So, there are cliff sides, et cetera. So, we now have to know how to tie certain knots in order to assist us in securing the basket, maybe anchoring it in order to lower it down, also to assist us in getting additional grip, on the basket in terms of getting persons out.”
Martin also outlined some of the knots the firefighters are exposed to during training.
“So there are a number of knots that we as firefighters seek to, get trained in such as the, there is a family of eight. That is one of the most important knots to know as a firefighter. The figure eight, the figure eight follow through, figure eight on a bite. There is the butterfly, you have the prusik knot, the reef knot, just to name a few.”
He said fire officers also receive medical training noting that these types of training are significant in order to save lives.
“We have persons who are trained as EMTs, persons, also trained as EMRs. EMTs, Emergency Medical Technician, and EMRs, Emergency Medical Responders. And you know, these type of training, they do indeed save lives. So firefighting training, save lives on one part, EMT- EMR training. Save lives on another aspect.”
Other types of training include extrication training where fire officers may be asked to use tools such as the jaws of life to rescue someone from a mangled vehicle in the event of a traffic accident and arson investigation where they would be tasked to use different scientific methods to ascertain the cause of a fire.