Haz Mat 2-9 New Station
&
L.C.P.S.T.C. Open House
April 24, 2004
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - When you back off the third-story deck and hang by a rope in mid-air, this is what you see:
Your feet, still planted solidly above you on the new Lancaster County Public Safety Training Center drill tower.
Instructor Craig Fausnacht urging you to lean back, lean back.
Your brake hand eases its death grip and down you go, suspending disbelief.
The descent gives you a daredevil thrill. But that’s only because you don’t stop to think how shockingly safe it all is.
The half-inch kernmantle strand in front of your face is supposed to support 4? tons, so you’ve got at least 8,850 pounds of safety margin.
And you don’t sprint down the line like some SWAT team guy on TV. You a-m-b-l-e.
Down on the ground, Phil Colvin, the county’s deputy director of emergency management, is on safety belay. So even if you let go and slap both hands over your eyes you won’t fall.
Improving safety is the whole idea behind the $12.7 million center at 101 Champ Blvd., East Hempfield Township. The theme surfaced repeatedly during a welcoming event for public officials on Friday and a public open house Saturday.
Beneficiaries include the county’s 475,000 residents and the 8,000 first responders who serve them.
Teaching people how to handle life-threatening situations can itself be dangerous.
Firefighters have died, for example, in Class A training burns fueled by pallets and hay bales.
The new structural burn building, which uses natural gas jets that can be switched on and off, should defuse such risks, said Ernest A. Rojahn Jr. of The Lancaster County Firemen’s Association.
“We’ve been working to get this for years.”
Dream come true
“Our first meeting to start this project was in 1968,” Rojahn recalled. Officials considered and rejected various sites.
Now, firefighters and cops who once trained in Harrisburg or beyond are overjoyed to have a high-tech facility that accommodates the whole emergency management spectrum on one 24-acre campus.
The center will allow trainees to simulate everything from a railroad tank car fire to a silo or sewer rescue. “It’s truly one-stop shopping here,” said Randy Gockley, county emergency management coordinator.
On Friday, the VIP tour kicked off with a visit to the driving simulation room.
“This is a terrific tool,” said city police Lt. Cindy Shirk. However, she warned, the three-dimensional visuals are so realistic “you can get carsick.”
Two officers climbed into virtual autos and practiced avoiding video-game-style obstacles. One driver finally crashed into another police car, causing cracks to radiate across the windshield and triggering a readout: “Scenario over.”
But they were just warming up.
Next door, county treasurer Craig Ebersole tested his reflexes by pointing an air-powered pistol as a lethal force exercise lit up a large screen.
A bad guy cradling a shotgun popped out of a parking garage.
Ebersole shot and took him out. A small red circle lit up the screen over the thug’s abdomen. But then another man lying in the street sat up and fired a handgun.
Live ammo
Over at the 12-lane indoor shooting range, largest of its kind in the state, county commissioners Pete Shaub and Dick Shellenberger unholstered real firearms.
Teaching cops how to shoot is only half the game, explained firearms instructor Ed Klinovski. “The big thing is to teach people when to shoot.”
Shaub’s 9-millimeter pistol banged and shell casings flew. Shaub removed his ear protection.
“I think I got...most of ‘em, Dick,” he said.
The tour continued outdoors to the trench rescue site, a concrete-lined slot ventilated by yellow hoses and, close by, the drill tower.
Donning helmet and harness, Shaub climbed to the third floor of the tower and rappelled down in a steady, controlled fall.
“With rope rescue,” explained Colvin, “it’s all very smooth and very slow.”
Commissioner Molly Henderson took the plunge next. “There!” she exclaimed when her feet grazed the ground. “Made it!”
Finally, Henderson joined Shaub and Shellenberger in fighting a computer controlled belch of flame in the two-story structural burn building.
Teamed with Eden and Rohrerstown firefighters in tan “bunker” suits with fluorescent green stripes, the trio rushed toward the blaze while dragging a hose.
Gas jets spouted flame at the back of the mock loading dock. Suit alarms that go off when a firefighter remains motionless for more than a few moments shrilled.
Non-toxic smoke billowed out the door. Fire training coordinator Rick Kane said one value of such exercises is to teach responders to wet the ceiling on the way in.
“The danger is that (the fire) will roll over your head and come down behind you.”
Fire training scenarios are limited only by imagination, said Pat Connelly of Kidde Fire Trainers Inc., the New Jersey company that outfitted the burn building.
Controllers can “chain” fires together so that they spread from room to room, he said. They can shut off flames on one side of a room and start them on another.
In short order, Connelly noted, a rookie can absorb knowledge that used to come only with years of experience.
Fire departments can gauge newbies’ mettle without risking lives, he said. “You want to find out that the guy on the nozzle won’t drop and run.”
Open house
On Saturday, curious visitors flocked to the center for a day of demonstrations and displays.
Events included a 20th-anniversary open house at the new Haz Mat 2 Environmental Fire Rescue Co. station and the unveiling of a series of Tom F. Hermansader art prints, which will help raise funds for the center.
Tongues of tangerine-colored propane flame erupted from the flammable liquids area.
Members of the Liberty Fire Co. in New Holland used the “Jaws of Life” to remove two doors from an upside-down wrecked car.
Six-year-old Jacob Divine and his mom, Sharon Moran, Lancaster, watched John Fazekas emerge from a white hazardous materials suit that made him look a little like the Michelin Man.
The suit reminded Moran that she lives “right around the corner” from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
Fazekas’s father, Les Fazekas, a firefighter from Bird-in-Hand, explained that the suit can block radioactive alpha and beta particles but is primarily designed to shield against heat and chemicals.
Moran, who previously lived in large cities served by paid responders, said she was surprised volunteers handle so much of the work here.
Tom Rieker and his fiancee, Carla Facemyer, said they were happy to give their kids a chance to try out the driving simulator.
Facemyer, a volunteer with Paradise fire police, said she can hardly wait to train at the new center. Rieker said he was most impressed with the safety improvements.
Back when he was a volunteer firefighter, he said, they’d ignite part of a tank truck or an old cinder block building.
The fires burned so hot you could see smoke coming through the masonry, he said.
“This is what they need. It’s a lot more controlled” and safer for firefighters.
“It’s been a long time coming.”
