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Smoke filled the basement Tuesday at the abandoned bank in downtown McHenry. Firefighters, even with flashlights, could see inches only in front of their face as they searched for a fallen comrade, sirens screaming in the background.
That scenario is one of four that firefighters from around McHenry County will face this week as they practice Rapid Intervention Team skills: rescuing downed firefighters from a “burning building” that is actually the former First Midwest Bank at 3510 W. Elm St.
[ Photos: Firefighter drill on rescue techniques in McHenry ]
The training is designed to ensure that, regardless of which departments are called in to help at a fire, they all know their roles for RIT, McHenry Township Fire Protection District Chief Rudy Horist said.
Firefighters from the 17 departments that make up the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, or MABAS, Region 5 will be through the training this week. They are practicing four rescue scenarios: A firefighter has fallen down an open elevator shaft, is “off the line” and disoriented, has had a bank safe fall onto them or has gotten entangled in lines and debris, Deputy Chief Karen Bush said.
A RIT team is called out to every fire, Horist said. If it ends up being a “nothing” fire, the team can be called off. But if there is an active fire, the RIT team is ready to go into action if a teammate goes down.
As firefighters bring in water lines and search for victims, the RIT team stands by to rescue if one of their own is injured inside a burning structure.
The hope is that with the unified training, it does not matter which of the fire departments are called for mutual aid, Horist said. They will all have had the same training and know what to do if a firefighter is injured.
On Tuesday, firefighters from McHenry Township, Crystal Lake, Spring Grove, Huntley and Woodstock got a rundown of the scenarios they’d run through from Chad Williams, a Woodstock Fire and Rescue District trainer.
They’d already learned a few lessons on Tuesday, Williams said, like ensuring firefighters call out on their radios when they found the missing firefighter and being specific in their equipment requests. He also warned firefighters to be aware of the entry doors and the air in their tanks “based on a building this size.”
McHenry Township Fire and the McHenry Police Department have been using the large, empty bank building for training for about the last four years, Bush said.
No actual fires are set inside the bank, and instead “theatrical” smoke is used to imitate the inside a burning building, Horist said. It feels like the real thing.
“Imagine what it would be like, to be in here with your radio and all of the noise,” from alarms Williams said as he showed a reporter the pitch-black and smoke filled basement.
One change in RIT that they were training for is that a commander is put inside the building with the firefighters searching for the missing firefighter, instead of being outside. “They can be relayed information and know what is going on inside with the team” when they are in the thick of the fire, Horist said.
When he started as a firefighter 43 years ago there was not a separate team for rescuing firefighters, Horist said. He remembers a blaze in 1993, at the R.R. Donnelley printing plant in Elgin, where they were searching for five downed firefighters who were running out of air.
They survived, he said, and a few years later RIT training and standards arrived on the scene. “It comes out of incidents where firefighters were killed.” Horist said.