Training
Introduction to Technical Rescue Skills 09/2008
Introduction to Technical Rescue Skills is a thirty-two hour, four-module program that is the pre-requisite for any of the FF-III Rescue programs. Course was designed to prepare students for the individual classes by covering the knowledge and skills needed for multiple disciplines in one program. An example of this would be air monitoring. Air monitoring is required in Confined Space, Trench Rescue, and Structural Collapse. Rather than spend a day in each of those programs, covering air monitoring is taught in depth in the ITRS program and reviewed in the individual classes.
Program Objectives: Designed to meet objectives of NFPA 1006 and/or 1670 to the Awareness level
Prerequisites: Firefighter II (New curriculum)Rescue Based Incident Command Systems: The student shall be able to correctly describe the components, operation, and functions of the Incident Command System during a rescue-based incident. A comprehensive rescue-based exercise will allow the student to apply all knowledge acquired in the program.
Air Monitoring: The student shall be able to correctly describe the use, operation, and function of a variety of detection devices in determining the presence, quantity, exposure potential of spills or leaks of known and unknown hazardous substances and air quality within the rescue environment.
Ropes and Rigging: The student, provided with a rope rescue scenario, shall correctly evaluate the existing and potential conditions that may occur where a rope rescue operation will be performed. Rope and rigging techniques, personal protective clothing, and rope safety.
Jacking, Heavy Lifting and Rigging: The student shall demonstrate the techniques for moving heavy objects in addition to jacking, rigging, or a combination of the two. Emphasis for this program will be placed on identification of resources, use of levers, manual and mechanical lifting techniques, and principles and physics of moving and lifting heavy objects.
Technical rescue refers to those aspects of saving life or property that employ the use of tools and skills that exceed those normally reserved for fire fighting, medical emergency, and rescue. These disciplines include rope rescue, swiftwater rescue, confined space rescue, ski rescue, cave rescue, trench/excavation rescue, and building collapse rescue, among others. In the United States, technical rescues will often have multiple jurisdictions operating together to effect the rescue, and will often use the Incident Command System to manage the incident and resources at scene.
NFPA regulation 1006 and 1670 state that all rescuers must have medical training to perform any technical rescue operation, including cutting the vehicle itself during an extrication. Therefore, in most all rescue environments, whether it is an EMS department or fire department that runs the rescue, the actual rescuers who cut the vehicle and run the extrication scene or perform any rescue such as rope, low angle, etc, are medical first responders, emergency medical technicians, or paramedics, as almost every rescue has a patient involved.
