Volunteer firefighters gather for spring training

Around 100 volunteer firefighters convened at the CSKT Division of Fire headquarters last Friday and Saturday for the Lake County Fire Association Spring Training.

Friday was a classroom session and on Saturday, firefighters from across the county and Flathead Reservation headed out for hands-on field exercises near McDonald Lake and St. Ignatius.

“One of the big things is we're trying to get everybody to become familiar with different apparatus from different agencies,” said incident commander and Rollins fire chief Carey Cooley. And since it’s a wildland training exercise, “they're out there, they're laying hose, they're getting wet, they're tromping through the forest.”

At one station, firefighters drafted water out of a nearby creek using portable pumps. “So they're working with water handling and making sure that they can all do the things they need to do to get water in and out of their trucks,” Cooley said.

At another station, participants were tasked with estimating the initial size of a mock fire and generating compass readings, in case GPS readings aren’t available from a cell phone.

“So they're telling dispatch what it looks like, what resources they need,” Cooley said. “It's good training for initial attack folks.”

Finally, at the structure triage station, firefighters were confronted with a scenario in which a fire swept out of the Mission Mountains and into the valley. “Crews have to go to each structure that will be in the way of the fire and triage it and say, can we stay here and defend this? Is it okay on its own? Or do we need to do a few things to protect it?”

When the last crew returned to headquarters, they met the unanticipated sight of bodies strewn across a field for a mass casualty training that was not on the published schedule.

Corey called it an “incident within an incident,” or an accident that could occur within the fire that they’re responding to.

The imaginary crash included two vehicles that had smacked into each other, and several victims that the fire crew had to triage and prepare to load into the ambulances and Life Flight and Alert helicopters that crew members summoned to the scene. While the injuries were fake, the helicopters were real.

"The  responders were surprised, and it was a great training opportunity for folks to drill on a scenario that they may not have encountered before," said Jodi O’Sullivan, Polson Fire Department’s Public Information Officer.

According to Cooley, the annual hands-on training builds knowledge, skill sets and camaraderie. “When we're out there in August and we get called to help each other and actually run into somebody that you just worked with at this exercise … it's invaluable for sure.”

This year’s event was hosted by the Lake County Fire Association, CSKT Division of Fire Management and the Montana Department of Natural Resources (DNRC).

“We want to acknowledge our stakeholders,” said O’Sullivan. “Because there's no way that all of us volunteer departments could do this on our own.”

Volunteer firefighters fill a portable water tank for drafting and water supply at the water-handling station near McDonald Lake last Saturday as the part of a countywide training session. (City of Polson Fire Department photo)