Salvage Training?

Ahhhhhhh,......YAWN!....Stretch....

Salvage training what are you crazy, we don't do that we barely have enough manpower to stretch lines, now you want us to throw covers! I want to throw up!

Wait.........Don't stop reading yet!

Salvage is an often neglected part of our job for those very reasons....we don't do it often enough, and we can barely have the manpower to do everything else we are supposed to do.

This week I have some random disorganzied thoughts about salvage and a couple of interesting ideas for salvage drills.

Like all the stuff on this training page, I am trying to plant the seed for a training and you need to make it grow and do something with it.

Why the hell do we always teach and say Salvage and Overhaul? One doesn't have as much to do with the other as we would believe and before I leave the fire service we might actually separate the two!

Some occupanices might require salvage to become a higher priority: These might include libraries, churches, city and town halls, museums where records and articatcs might in fact be irreplaceable. I am not suggesting that we lose any lives for property under any circumstances but it certainly moves salvage up on the priorities in any of the above mentioned occupancies.

Think about salvage considerations when you are shoveling out people's possessions into the front yard. That couch with the quilt on it is a smoldering wreck and it's in your way, but to the owner that is the quilt that now dead aunt Sadie crocheted by hand.

Salvage drills mostly consist of pulling the apparatus out, showing folds rolls etc., and maybe trying to cover some furniture strategically placed in the day room. While I know most of these are necessary and are recognized as skills we need, I have yet to be able to do the "two man, inflate a throw- balloon method" that they teach in the essentials manuals. Usually I knock over a precious vase and stain and or ruin the eight foot normal ceiling that prevents me from doing that in the first place!

Train on rolls and folds that one or two people can do easily.

Empty the apparatus room / bay. Take a 10 foot step ladder and have someone stand at the top of it with a garden hose. Have other members form teams. Give them a designated task like the following: This is an overhead light fixture or pipe leak and you are unable to shut off the flow: The water must be directed out a side door or window. After the instructions start a gentle flow of water from the garden hose and let the crews make chutes, use ladders, pike poles, and catchalls to direct and divert the flow. When they are done, roughly chalk out the amount of spill that hit the floor. Start the next team as the first and chalk out their puddle. The group with the smallest amount of water on the floor is the winner. Things like this make it interesting challenging and more real life and your personnel will become very creative in their methods.

Take a garden hose, adapt it to a piece of 3/4" copper pipe about 10 feet long. Make an irregular slice in the pipe with a sawzall or make a series of pinholes. Have personnel control water flow. By rotating the pipe in different directions the problem becomes serious.

Use sprinkler props and leaking overhead sprinkler prop pipes for salvage drills.

Using a roscoe smoke machine have two firefighters enter an area that is moderately smoky and return with simulated valuable items they can carry: Have the area stocked with wallets, purse, phtographs, insurance policy documents, business records, leger books etc.and other props that you devise., and then review what areticles they retrieve and discuss them with the group. This gets them operating under a mask as well.

We do still say we protect life and property don't we? Well salvage is the property piece and by a little creative thinking you can do some innovative salvage drills that will make your troops at least think about it and be prepared to act when needed.

And as always if anyone else has any valuable ideas how to do salvage training safely and effectively, let me know and we will share them with others.


Pete Lamb
Copyright 2013