Cutting a Car Apart

The fun continues: last night, we cut two cars apart.

One thing that often happens in vehicle accidents is that stuff gets bent around in ways that make it hard or impossible to get victims out. Even in relatively simple accidents, doors can get bent and jammed, making them barriers to getting to patients.

But we have Tools (tm)!

One is a surprisingly simple little gizmo that looks like a Bic pen. When you press it against the corner of a window, a spring loads, then releases, striking the window hard enough to shatter it. This works on all car windows except the windshield, which is apparently more resistant to that type of thing.

For windshields, then, we have a saw with a pointed end that, when swung, makes nice little holes in windshields. The saw then cuts through the glass, and does so much more easily than, say, a handsaw cuts through wood. (We also played with taking out a windshield with an axe, but you tend to not do that with a patient sitting in the front seat.)

Then there are spreaders. These are tools with arms that come to a point, that when inserted into a door opening, can bend a car door in half, or can be reversed to grab and bend the edge of a door. We also used it over the top of the door's sill to pop the door edge out to make more room for inserting them.

And cutters. Big hook-shaped scissors that can cut through a door post in a few seconds. And rams, that when positioned properly on both sides of the car, can roll back the dashboard like tinfoil.

All of these tools are powered by a hydraulic power plant (think: portable electric generator, only with fluid tubes coming off, instead of wires), making these tools fairly portable around an accident scene (i.e. not limited to being connected to rescue apparatus). And the tools themselves are fairly hefty, maybe 20-30lbs each for the smaller ones, and 50lbs or more (requiring two people) for the larger ones.

For the most part, while the class was good fun, it was mostly an awareness-level class; we'll be taking a VRT (vehicle rescue technician) class at some point in the future, to get better at it all. Still, to remove the windows, doors, roof and dash of two cars in fairly short order was pretty impressive stuff.

Exterior Burn Session, and a Call

Now we're getting to the meat of the Essentials course, putting the stuff we've learned into practice. Last night, we went to our local traning center, and "put out" some training fires.

First up was a simulated car fire. The simulator is a metal car-like shell with propane burners. When the gas is turned on, the car lights up nice and hot, (i.e. from the air truck parked at least 100ft away, the heat was like a campfire). So we got our gear and airpacks on, and first time through, tackled a fire in the engine compartment. I was on nozzle twice, backup 3 times and Halligan bar (think: heavy steel pry bar, used in real life to pry the hood open) once.

Next up was a propane tank fire. The simulator there acted like a pipe leading out of the tank had ruptured and was enclosing the tank itself in flames. On the simulator, as in real life, you use fog nozzles to push the flames back, and shut off the emergency valve. I was on nozzle twice, backup once or twice, and valve once. Now, of course, when the nozzle guys are pushing the flames back, the valve guy is crawling through the water stream to get to the valve, so we all got quite wet.

Lastly, we did the car again, but this time with two hoselines, and the whole car was involved: engine, passenger compartment, truck, and a simulated fuel spill under the rear of the car. I was on nozzle first, working from the rear of the car up to the front. Of course, with teams on both sides, it was really easy for each nozzle guy to be accidentally hitting the other guy with his stream; more soakage.

Then the fun happened.

My second run, I was backing up a little guy, keeping my hand on his shoulder to counteract the force from the nozzle. So far, so good, but as we got up to the passenger compartment, all of a sudden, he starts moving quickly to the front of the car, and loses the nozzle. I'm about 8ft back of the nozzle, holding on to the now-flailing hose, trying to get it under control. Fortunately, the hose swung hard to the side, and I managed to get it kinked, allowing me to grab the nozzle, get it under control, and shut it down. Not what was supposed to happen.

All in all, the evening was good fun, (even the loose hose, after the fact), and I learned a good bit about fire attack. It was pretty impressive that what was somewhat warm w/o gear at 100ft wasn't a problem at all only 5ft away with gear. Add to that a post-session conversation with my chief (who was there acting as the burn tech), and it was well worth the evening.

Then we head back to station, hang our soaked gear up and go home, only to get paged about 10 mins after I crawled into bed, with a vehicle accident. Having to reassemble my wet gear, I missed E2, and rode out on Squad, only to watch others clean up, and return to station.