DQFD practices firefighter rescue tactics

A short distance away from their firehouse, Du Quoin firefighters aggressively stormed a building to rescue one of their own on Thursday.

On this night, it was a drill and the "victim" was a member of a training class being conducted by Fire Capt. Adam Hill.

"It's company training," Hill said. "Each shift breaks up (into groups) and we have different volunteers that come in.

"We're working on RIT (Rapid Intervention Team) training. They're firefighters that are designed, with their own set of tools, for firefighter rescue."

Hill explained the RIT is deployed in the event a firefighter is injured during a fire or becomes lost or disoriented and cannot find their way out.

"They're the ones that go in to help rescue them," he said.

The two-story house at the corner of Poplar and Mulberry, which is owned by Steve Merek, is a wonderful tool for the DQFD, according to Hill.

"This house has been gutted, so we don't have to worry about going in there, scratching up walls and tearing up floors and whatnot," Hill said. "A lot of what we do is banging around trying to get a full-sized man, that's dead weight with all the extra gear on him, up a flight of stairs."

Hill said noted that for every downed firefighter in a house, it takes 12 firefighters to rescue that person.

"Most of your would-be rescuers end up as victims themselves," he said. "We're already in a bad environment, what compounds it is if something has gone wrong in that structure - a partial collapse, the firefighter is lost, disoriented or can't find their way back out, or the fire comes up and gets their means of egress (escape)."

Hill said one tactic RIT teams are taught is called "soften a house."

"If I know we've got firefighters working on the second floor, we want to start getting ladders up to the second floor, give them all the means of egress that they can," he said. "Go around the structure. If we have a bunch of locked doors, go ahead and force them open then pull the door shut."

Hill said firefighters don't want to leave the doors open as it would create a "flow path" of oxygen that fires use as fuel.

"If we've forced the door, we know we can open it anytime we need, but we're keeping the air shut off to (the fire)," he said.

Training with Hill were firefighters Aaron Haggard, Jared Kremer and Chris Hopkins.