Blackshear recently hosted a “live fire” exercise for 26 firefighters from Blackshear, Pierce County, Baxley, Hinesville and Effingham County Fire Departments.
“Live fire exercise” might mean training using live ammunition for the police or military, but it means something else entirely when done by fire fighters.
Lee Clements of Douglas City Fire Department and David Herrin of the Georgia Fire Academy coached and critiqued four different crews of fire fighters as they took turns managing the two hoses. The goal was proper hose management, good weight distribution and bracing the man in front of you so the fighter working the nozzle doesn’t get knocked back by the force of the spray, though there initially was no water involved.
After a few dry runs with crews of men rotating in and out on the two hoses, creeping near an all black fuel tank big enough to keep a large home warm all winter, the next phase is ready. Superior Propane turned on the gas and began jetting out waves of heat palpable from yards away, clouds of fireballs and jets of flame shooting high into the air. Deliberately, mind you.
Unlike the proton beams in Ghostbusters, it is good to cross the streams in a situation like this, especially as the fire began to almost fight back like a living thing, recoiling from the powerful blasts of water and leaping into the air or bellying a fireball out to one side or another to get around it.
Made possible through the help of Superior Propane and the Georgia Public Safety Training Commission, the special training exercise was conducted under controlled circumstances and an abundance of caution with extra hoses manned by other firefighters ready to hit the fire-spewing hazard from an entirely different angle should anything get out of hand.
