Does your department provide “Heavy Rescue” and what types of rescues or specialities does that entail? Please post your responses in the comments section below.
During my 32 -plus years on te job in Toledo, the department evolved from a “fire” department into a department that provides several services.
When my father came on in 1952, they responded to vehicular accudents and pulled people from the wreckage, including buildings that collapsed from tornados and other disasters as well as people trapped in small spaces that couldn’t get out (In fact while he was a lieutenant, my father and his crew received several awards for removing a worker who fell into a 40-foot cement silo.) We did these things but didn’t have fancy names and truckloads of specialized tools and equipment back then.
Today, and rightfully so, fire departments have received special training, funding, and resources to respond to these emergencies. These “specialties” are grouped together into a genaric term called “heavy rescue.”
In Toledo, we possess water rescue, confined space, extrication from vehicles and other objects, and high- and low-angle rescue capabilities. These units are housed in specific stations and are staffed only by trained “certified” personnel. —John “Skip” Coleman retired as assistant chief from the Toledo (OH) Department of Fire and Rescue. He is a technical editor of Fire Engineering; a member of the FDIC Educational Advisory Board; and author of Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer (Fire Engineering, 1997), Managing Major Fires (Fire Engineering, 2000), and Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer, Second Edition (Fire Engineering, 2008).
