South King Fire and Rescue’s elite technical rescue team must be prepared for any type of situation.
That’s why at least once a year, firefighters on the team practice getting others out of tight quarters.
“Confined spaces,” as the effort called, describes any space that entraps a person and is not meant to be lived in. It can be an attic, the crawl space under the house, or in the case of a recent South King Fire and Rescue drill, a wastewater treatment holding container.
The training has paid off in real situations. The skills have been applied to water rescues at Redondo and Steel Lake. The team recently applied these skills to a car crash in Des Moines, in which they secured the vehicle in a ravine for a tow truck. The team also responded to the August 2008 incident in which an Oregon teen died after being trapped in a sand cave at Dash Point State Park.
Federal regulations about confined spaces, and the need for rescue drills, came about after a 1986 study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. That study found 60 percent of confined space fatalities occurred among would-be rescuers. This brought the need for numerous federal regulations to the forefront. In 1997, the National Fire Protection Association established the need for a written procedure. The procedure became part of an advanced training and education program. Federal law requires that each member of a rescue team practice “confined spaces” at least once every 12 months, by means of a simulated rescue, in which the workers remove a “victim.”
Although the federal law requires that the drill be held once a year, SKFR tries to do it twice.
The drill
The team, which completed more than 240 hours of specialty training, underwent the drill last month at the Lakehaven sewer water treatment plant on Dash Point Road. The team operates under the assumption that a worker has gone down into the covered underground container, and has passed out inside the space, Capt. Tom Thorson said.
Plant workers call the situation in, and the drill begins.
There is a command station to establish. Gas detectors find the pockets of toxic air as well as fans blowing in fresh air. The entry team has to suit up, always working in pairs.
The first order of business is always to find out if the victim is alive. If so, time is of the essence, Thorson said.
Rescuers also fill out paperwork, in part to make sure they don’t forget any steps.
“The victim can have a bad day,” Capt. Steve Hopf said. “The rescue workers cannot have a bad day.”
The practice is repeated several times. After each attempt, there is a debriefing on how the team did, what worked, what didn’t and what can be done next time.
Supervisors also add their thoughts about what could be done better.
Big picture
SKFR’s technical rescue team is part of the regional team that includes members for Kent, Tukwila, Renton, Valley Regional Fire Authority and North Highline.
Some of those members are also on the Washington state branch of the National Urban Search and Rescue team, Thorson said. There are 28 teams in the nation.
On the SKFR technical rescue team, there are 16 firefighters, split among the three shifts. The local team would get to the call in about four to six minutes. However, technical crews from the others in the region could also be dispatched and there could be about 20 technical rescue workers at a site in 18-24 minutes, Thorson said.
Confined space means “a space that is large enough and so configured that an employee can bodily enter and perform assigned work; and has limited or restricted means for entry or exit (for example, tanks, vessels, silos, storage bins, hoppers, vaults, and pits are spaces that may have limited means of entry) and is not designed for continuous employee occupancy,” according to the United States Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
