I passed the Breathing Apparatus course with flying colours! My knees are killing me! It hurts to move! And I smell like a decaying compost bucket. But I'm now fully qualified to go into a burning building wearing 79 layers of fire-proof "clothing" (imagine being wrapped in about 9 thick blankets) and an oxygen tank to search for casualties and trip over chairs randomly placed in the darkness, kind of like a nasty Easter Egg hunt.
It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be; it was bloody hard but with all the techniques they drilled into us, we just followed procedure and managed to get the hang of it without freaking out. So here's what happens:
Your officer in charge tells you you're going in. You're wearing heavy Level 2 pants, boots like concrete blocks, a t-shirt, then a heavy Level 2 jacket zipped up with a collar velcroed up to your chin. You already feel like you can barely move. Then you pull out the rack of oxygen cylinders on backpack harnesses, check all your hoses, distress alarm, torch, pressure etc, step into it, strap in, and step away to remove it from the rack. You're now carrying about an extra fifteen kilos of weight. You then put on the face mask, holding your breath as you pull the straps tight, then take a breath to activate the air flow. The mask fits around your head with a heap of rubber straps like some kind of creepy S&M costume. Now you pull a thick cotton flash-hood (balaclava) over your head and around the edges of the mask, then over that you strap on your Level 2 helmet & visor, and finally pull your gloves on; they make you feel like you have big fat cartoon hands.
If you have claustrophobia, you are now starting to think "OK, I can take another five seconds of this and then I'm going to start thinking about screaming jesus god it's hot". You can hear your breaths in the mask like Darth Vader. You and your buddy check each other's gear, pull your tally tags off the distress alarm on your belt, hand it to the Entry Control Officer, who writes down the time and how much air you have in your tank, and works out how long you can be inside before they have to relieve you.
Then you go into the building. Our instructors filled it with special effects smoke and made it dark, so you could hardly see your hand in front of your face. We followed the search techniques - shuffle along with one hand on the wall, one hand on the lead buddy's harness plate, and searching any wardrobes etc for bodies as you go. If you find a body (we used real-weight dummies), you pull them out and get them to the triage station outside. If you stop moving, your distress alarm goes off and the other teams or the emergency team come and find you & take you out.
The dark smoke-filled room run was pretty freaky, but then they made us do it with blackout masks, so we could not see a thing. I can't begin to tell you how frigging hot it was. Anything soft and lumpy could be a body; Amanda and I tried to rescue a rolled up rug. The instructors are in the room with you the whole time to make sure you're safe, and also to throw curlies at you, like moaning, thumping, or suddenly setting off someone's alarm. They would also stop us every once in a while and make us tell them where we thought the exit was; we always got it right (you have to keep a mental map in your head as you go).
Then we did a full "reality run" with the fire truck, hose and no instructors to help; it was hysterical, but apparently we did well. Tony, one of our instructors, played the role of Panicking Screaming Father. Bithun and I found an adult body and it was a comedy of errors trying to get him out; I ended up with the heavy end, then accidentally dragged him by the head while Bithun broke one of his legs. Then Bithun and I were told to hide in one of the rooms and set off our distress alarms; the rest of the teams piled in, rescued Bithun, and left me to die in the flames. A few minutes later they remembered me, and all piled in again and suddenly I was being carried out by about six crazed trainees all yelling "Are you all right?" "Don't panic!" and "Where are we oh OWW look out is that a chair?"
It was great. Gary stayed all day and helped us with our kits, put lunch out and took photos with my camera. When we'd finished, Stick Man popped by and made us some pizza and Gary brought me a nice cold can of Coke and bourbon, and now I'm going to have a really hot bath and lie down and never move again.
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