Day two of the road crash course!
As with yesterday, I kicked the day off by driving to Murchison to meet the rest of the team from Tatura; we went as a group from there to Seymour. Today was very much a practical day, with most of the time spent with hands on tools. We stabilised and re-stabilised the vehicles we were working on repeatedly, and also had cause to do some glass management as well.
The bulk of the day, though, was spent with the Holmatro spreaders and shears, crushing and cutting our way into cars with the objective of bring able to get people out of them. We'd all done a certain amount of road crash rescue training with our units, so using the tools wasn't new to us, but it's always an awkward thing to do. I'm pleased to report, though, that each of our groups was starting to get pretty swift and effective as the day wore on.
I have to say, I'm full of respect for the training team. This is the sort of high risk, very technical course which would involve a lot of planning, and they're doing it with a very large number of candidates - I think there were about 26 of us. They've clearly put a massive amount of effort into making it all happen. I hope we've justified it!
I had one insight this afternoon, when we'd been working hard for multiple sessions and most of us were sweating freely inside our overalls. I remembered a scene in Reno 911 where firefighters' passion for working out was made fun of. As I lifted the spreaders for the umpteenth time, I was starting to think of the physical strength required to do the work effectively. If I want to be good at it, I should probably put a bit more focus on weights.
Comparing notes on the drive back from Seymour, pretty well everyone from the Tatura unit had found it a pretty satisfying weekend - even the fellow who accidentally dropped a dry chemical fire extinguisher causing it to empty its contents over everyone within 20 metres(!). All of us are looking forward to tackling the next weekend of it.
Not much more to add for the moment. This week I need to get on top of the rescue boat course material, and I'll try and circulate some road crash material to the rest of the team from today as well.
Hope your Sundays are going great!
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