TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Twenty-two Tucson firefighters are spending the first week of November in a four-day training course that teaches proper safety tactics for entering and exiting burning houses.
It's a program called Fire Ground Survival, and is taught by representatives of the International Association of Firefighters, which represents more than 332,000 firefighters and paramedics in the U.S. and Canada.
"People don't always realize firefighters are operating in interior low or zero visibility conditions," said Robin Loewen, Fire Ground Survival lead instructor.
"So the way we manage that is we stay structurally oriented by going in left hand search going in on right mapping the structure with our hands and being connected to geographic areas. Things can happen. We can get pushed off a wall we can have a partial collapse," Loewen said.
Trainers simulate some of the dangerous conditions a firefighter may encounter in a building, such as tangled wires under which first responders may have to crawl.
TFD says the program graduates will be eligible to teach the course to other fire departments around Southern Arizona.
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