Selected by an application process, Lufkin Fire Department Chief Ted Lovett and Capt. Dustin Ledford recently participated in a week-long course on special operations program management at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Md.

Funded by FEMA through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the course consisted of various team management skills of special operations disciplines including hazardous materials, swift water, confined space rescue, high angle rescue and rope rescue.

Lovett said training at the national level allows his department to stay competent on federal standards of care.

“We are in a position to expand on our special operations services. We’re revamping our team and getting deeper into high angle rescue evolutions, confined space rescue evolutions and swift water using rope rescue, so it’s going to involve a lot more training on a our part and getting more equipment and commitment,” Lovett said. “Going to the class opened up networking with several other department heads and people involved in special operations management. It allowed us to receive a lot of information on how things are done on a national level to help us move into a more focused area of getting the job done.”

The management-type course will allow the department to continue delivering a quality level of service Lufkin residents have come to expect, Lovett said.

“No matter what happens, the fire department gets called,” he said. “We do everything across the board when it comes to EMS, fire, rescue or (hazardous materials) and we have to respond. We have to be skilled and proficient in all of those areas, and the same group has to do all of it.”

Selected by an application process, Lufkin Fire Department Chief Ted Lovett and Capt. Dustin Ledford recently participated in a week-long course on special operations program management at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Md.

Funded by FEMA through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the course consisted of various team management skills of special operations disciplines including hazardous materials, swift water, confined space rescue, high angle rescue and rope rescue.

Lovett said training at the national level allows his department to stay competent on federal standards of care.

“We are in a position to expand on our special operations services. We’re revamping our team and getting deeper into high angle rescue evolutions, confined space recsue evolutions and swift water using rope rescue, so it’s going to involve a lot more training on a our part and getting more equipment and commitment,” Lovett said. “Going to the class opened up networking with several other department heads and people involved in special operations management. It allowed us to receive a lot of information on how things are done on a national level to help us move into a more focused area of getting the job done.”

The management-type course will allow the department to continue delivering a quality level of service Lufkin residents have come to expect, Lovett said.

“No matter what happens, the fire department gets called,” he said. “We do everything across the board when it comes to EMS, fire, rescue or (hazardous materials) and we have to respond. We have to be skilled and proficient in all of those areas, and the same group has to do all of it.”

COLONIAL HEIGHTS – Rescue crews from throughout the state came to Central Virginia this week to participate in the Rescue Challenge.

The first rescue challenge was held in May 1995, an invitation-only event to six departments from throughout the state. Since that time, additional teams have been invited to the event, and last year’s event saw 10 teams representing 23 organizations competing.

The challenge is designed to test each team’s technical and organizational skills as well as to foster networking between them.

The events give rescuers a chance to exchange ideas as well as to enhance their skills while working real-life problems. Over four days, teams complete two scenarios per day for a total of eight scenarios, including high angle rope rescue, confined space rescue, trench rescue, vehicle/heavy machinery rescue and light and heavy structural collapse rescue.

Teams from Virginia, Maryland, the federal government and private companies have sent teams to participate. Many of the current teams are made up with individuals from multiple jurisdictions such as the Crater Regional Hazardous Materials Team. Organizers say such teams lead to additional experience with coordination and cooperation.

Many of the individual participants are on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces.

These personnel are highly trained and have been sent to locations around the world to assist in large-scale disasters. The nation’s regional technical rescue teams and FEMA USAR Task Forces have gained experience during the Oklahoma City bombing, earthquakes in Iran, Turkey, Russia, Mexico and California. Hurricanes in Florida and the Gulf Coast have also required the assistance of these task forces. The task forces were also a critical resource at the Pentagon and World Trade Centers on Sept. 11, 2001, and with the international response to Haiti.

This year’s rescue challenge was hosted by Chesterfield, Henrico, Hanover and the Crater Region, which includes Colonial Heights, Petersburg, Hopewell, Prince George and Fort Lee fire departments.

The agencies worked with local companies to provide challenging problems at a variety of sites including a landfill, amusement park and a coal-fired power plant.

There were nine teams participating in this year’s challenge representing 23 agencies across Virginia and Maryland

BURNABY, B.C. – Dozens of people could have died because of a mushroom farm owner’s negligence, the lead investigator into the deaths of three men on the farm has told a coroner’s inquest.  Mohinder Bhatti of WorkSafeBC testified Tuesday the workers who died or were injured had no idea what they were doing when they tried to unplug a pipe on that fateful day in September 2008.

“They weren’t thinking straight,” he said.  Bhatti said had they cleared the pipe fully, hydrogen sulfide, a colourless, poisonous gas that smells like rotten eggs, would have gushed out.

He said there were about 50 workers on the farm and another 20 or so in the area. Depending on which way the wind was blowing, the toxic fumes could have killed many people.  Bhatti said when officials measured for hydrogen sulfide, it was 500 parts per million, the highest their meter would record.  The inquest began Monday and is examining the 2008 deaths of Ut Tran, Jimmy Chan and Ham Pham. Two other workers were left with permanent brain damage.

The site where the men worked included a compost facility that converted chicken manure, straw, gypsum and water into fertilizer, which was then used on the mushroom farm.  The inquest heard the men had cut the rusty bolts off a pipe in the brown-water tank and partly cleared a blockage. One man complained of a smell and then collapsed.

Four others went into the shed to help and were either killed or horribly injured.  Bhatti said the workers could speak Vietnamese but couldn’t read or write in their own language, and no engineers were consulted on building the composting facility.

He said the facility was planned “on the back of a cigarette pack,” and “was built to fail.”  Bhatti said the Township of Langley never issued a permit to operate and was, in fact, in court on the day of the accident seeking an order to have the facility shut down.

Earlier Tuesday, the inquest heard that 18 people have died in enclosed spaces in B.C. in the last decade and all the deaths could have been avoided.  Geoffrey Clark, a WorksafeBC expert on confined spaces, said most of those deaths involved people trying to rescue others who’d been overcome by fumes inside a structure.

“It’s built into us to try and rescue someone in trouble in those situations,” he said. “You can’t do that.”  In the case of the mushroom farm accident, the paramedics who arrived on the scene did the right thing by staying out of the shed where the deaths occurred, said Clark.

“It will literally suck the oxygen right out of your body,” he said.  Paramedics have already told the inquiry that they struggled to keep other farm workers out of the hut.  Clark said after the accident, officials translated confined-spaces regulations into several different languages, including Vietnamese.

He said the regulations are some of the best in North America.  “We don’t need more regulations,” said Clark. “If confined space regulations are followed, people don’t die.”  Companies should be prepared for such an event, have their own rescue teams and have an enclosed-spaces plan, he added.

Meantime, Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, said it’s not good enough to have rules and regulations. He said those rules and regulations must also be enforced.  “You have to make it the culture and ultimately when people break the regulations and people die from your illegal activity, which is clearly what happened here, then you should go to jail for a while,” he said.

“Maybe that’ll make employers realize they can’t ignore the regulations.”  Last November, a judge imposed fines of $350,000 on two companies, A1 Mushrooms and HV Truong, and their three owners, who pleaded guilty in the Langley incident.

The accident happened about 11:40 p.m. Monday in an alley in the 800 block of Innes Street NE, near Eastern Avenue.  Grand Rapids Deputy Fire Chief Jerry Salatka said authorities called for the department’s “confined space rescue team” to handle the incident.  Police were investigating why the manhole cover was missing.

Rescuers set up a tripod above the manhole and used harness system to lift the woman out of the hole, he said.  Salatka said the rescuers check for possible gases and take other precautions in such rescues. Firefighters were at the scene about an hour.  The woman, who was not seriously hurt, was taken to Spectrum Health Butterworth hospital for treatment.

Firefighter John Kelly died after being overcome by low oxygen and sewer gases while attempting to rescue utility worker from sewer manhole near firehouse

By Sarah M. Smart
FireRescue1 Staff

Firefighter Kelly died after being overcome by low oxygen and sewer gases while attempting to rescue a utility worker from a sewer manhole near the firehouse. The Department of Public Works employee also died.

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On Sept. 6, village public works was notified of a sewer backup at the firehouse. A DPW worker entered a manhole, and firefighters soon found him lying at the bottom of the pipe.

Firefighter Kelly went to his pickup truck, put his boots on, and entered the manhole in civilian clothing with no PPE or SCBA, unbeknownst to his chief. He made it halfway down the access ladder and then fell to the bottom, according to the report.

Firefighters pulled both victims from the manhole and started CPR and emergency medical care. They were transported to the hospital, where they were pronounced dead from asphyxia due to low oxygen and exposure to sewer gases.

The resulting NIOSH report released Monday recommended that firefighters be properly trained and equipped to recognize the hazards of and to participate in a confined space technical rescue incident. Recognizing confined spaces in any occupation is the first step in preventing deaths, the report said, but operations and technician levels of training are ideal for public service employees.

NIOSH also recommended standard operating procedures regarding technical rescue capabilities and risk-benefit analyses to protect the safety of all responders.

“The incident escalated from assisting the public utility crews by moving apparatus to witnessing one of the workers become unconscious and fall inside the sewer,” the report said.

Once confined spaces are recognized and procedures for them are standardized, fire departments should also ensure that an effective incident management system is in place to support technical rescue confined space operations. A more organized and informed response to the emergency would have prevented a rescuer from becoming a victim, the report said.

NIOSH’s final recommendation to fire departments is to have a safety officer properly trained in the technical rescue field being performed on scene and integrated into the command structure.

“A fire department safety officer qualified in confined space rescue could have provided the incident commander with information that could have minimized the threat to other emergency personnel assisting in the operation,” the report said.

Officials said the boom of a crane at “Site J” of the 7 subway line extension project on 34th Street and 11th Avenue came off and crashed to the ground. A team of construction workers were 60 feet below street level at the time, and four of them were injured.

They were taken out in what officials described as a high-angle rescue operation. One of them, 30 years old, suffered massive trauma and later died. Three other workers were injured, and one grieving relative who had rushed to the scene suffered trauma. 

 ”We had a fire department doctor respond, we had two FDNY rescue medics,” said FDNY Chief Jack Sullivan. “It was extremely dangerous because we had construction equipment that wasn’t stable, and the crane was leaning against the building.”

The crane was set up on the second of three levels at the construction site on Manhattan’s West Side, the city officials said. The FDNY said the boom came apart in two pieces — one 80 feet long and the other 40 feet long.

Standing on a sidewalk, one construction laborer collapsed in tears into the arms of another worker. A laborer could be heard saying: “I can’t take it.”
 
Thomas Rushkin, a retired city police officer and private investigator, said he was on his way home when he saw emergency vehicles heading over and got a glance at the pieces of the crane.
 
“The arm is broken in half,” he said.
 
Another witness, Kennon Murphy, of Charlotte, N.C., said he was on his way to the nearby Javits Convention Center when he heard “a big boom.”

The 7 subway line extension was due to open in December 2013.

For now, the city’s Buildings Department has stopped work on the site. Officials said the cause is under investigation.

The site of the accident is across the street from the Javits Center, where the New York International Auto Show, which typically attracts more than 1 million visitors, is set to begin Friday.

In a statement Tuesday night, the MTA said: “We pray for the recovery of the workers injured as a result of this tragic accident tonight. We will work together with all proper authorities to conduct a thorough investigation on the circumstances behind the unfortunate accident.”