Training puts BFD firefighters in tight spot

By John Howell
As instructors from the Mississippi Fire Academy administered a Confined Space Rescue course last week Batesville firemen trained in what appears to have be an obstacle course designed with only claustrophobia in mind.
“It was pretty much a donated thing,” Batesville Fire Chief Tim Taylor said of the series of black culverts partially buried in sand connecting concrete bunkers made from precast boxes.
“We try to simulate as many scenarios that our guys might encounter,” Taylor said. Those might include children or adults trapped in a sewer line or culverts, rescue from a tank where toxic or explosive gases are present and so on.
The claustrophobia course is a recently completed addition to the BFD Broome-Florence Fire Training Facility on Panola Avenue where shipping containers have been configured to simulate multi-level buildings with exterior and interior staircases, separate rooms, doorways and other structural features of a building.
During last week’s training, Batesville firemen practiced rescue from a deep pit. The feature was a surplus metal gasoline storage tank turned upright with its open top accessible from a metal tower built as part of the course. Under the watch of fire academy instructors, firemen in full gear practiced the synchronization and coordination required to lower their comrade on a rope into the pit and then extract both the fireman and “victim” safely from the pit.
Other firemen on the ground watched and timed their fellow first responders and critiqued their movements, all not only under the watchful eyes of the state instructors but also one of their number who stood on the tower with them and continually watched the operation to prevent a training accident.
The fire chief recited a number of in-kind donors who helped with the facility — Forterra Pipe and Precast in Como for the concrete boxes, Bo Holloway Trucking for hauling the boxes to the site, MMC for offloading the trucks, David Karr and the Wastewater Treatment Plant welders who welded the tower platform together, Huron Smith Oil Company for donating the old tanks that were turned upright to make the “pit,” and TVEPA for drilling the holes to set the pipes for the town.
“We paid for some concrete and the culvert,” Taylor said.
The construction of the new feature of the training facility came about much like the original, which began when the late Elizabeth Florence left a bequest of $50,000 in memory of her brother, the late Dave Broome, former Batesville Fire Chief. The containers were purchased with the funds and in-kind donations helped to bring the facility to fruition. It was dedicated last July.