South Frontenac Fire Department stages training scenario at Frontenac Community Arena

Craig Bakay | Aug 21, 2019

It’s early on a Tuesday evening. The call comes in that there has been smoke spotted coming from the change rooms at the Frontenac Community Arena.

It’s a realistic scenario that South Frontenac Fire and rescue want to be ready for. And so, last Tuesday night, they were out in full force to practise just such an eventuality.

 “A fire alarm has been pulled, occupants have left the building and there’s smoke coming from the locker rooms,” said Capt. Shane Peters, who organized the scenario. “This is a search and rescue training goal.”

Peters said they were “lucky” that arena staff was down with the concept.

“We’ve never had the chance to do something like this before,” he said. “We had excellent communication with the arena board and staff to let us do this.”

Firefighters did do some pre-event planning a week before, visiting the facility and getting the layout.

But, they didn’t know there would still be some people still in the building. (The people still in the building were played by 10 new recruits from the recent class.)

“It’s as real as we can get it,” Peters said. “If we hit a bump along the road, we’ll react.

“The firefighters don’t know there are still people in there, some of whom are unconscious (played by dummies).”

One of the first ‘victims’ to be rescued is a young woman screaming “my baby, my baby.”

Inside, it’s dark. The lights are all out. There is smoke. Alarm bells are ringing.

Firefighters go room to room screaming “Fire Rescue, Call Out, Is Anyone in here.”

“In this scenario, we do a primary search,” Peters said. “We’re looking for where the fire is located.

“Once we find it, we try to control it and then we do a secondary search to get all the victims out.

“Then, we’ll do a full suppression of the fire.”

In all, five stations responded, Verona first, Hartington second, Sydenham third and then two more. About 25 firefighters were involved. This exercise was strictly a South Frontenac training exercise.

“The firefighters responded to pages on their phones,” Peters said. “They came here without lights and sirens but got here pretty quick once the page went out.”

There was also an area set aside to help victims and a “rehabilitation area” set up for firefighters who had been in the building to get their blood pressure, heart rate and other vitals checked before being cleared to go back into the building.

The benefits of conducting such an exercise are pretty self evident but there are a couple of other benefits that might not be quite as obvious, Peters said.

“We want our residents to see the kind of training we get,” he said. “And, it’s a good chance for new Asst. Fire Chief Alex Bennett to work with the staff.”

“We were here last week to do some pre-planning,” Bennett said. “All of this makes a big difference at 2am.