Rescue Week

This week at the academy, our technical rescue teams have come to teach us some basic rescue and extrication techniques. It's been a great week with the exception of the 6 hour lecture kicking it off. Our training evolutions have been really fun, and our rescue team instructors have been really cool and helpful.

So far, we've done some repelling down the side of our tower in harnesses we tied out of webbing (praying my knots hold up), torn up cars with spreaders and cutters, dove headfirst off balconies onto ladders and pivoted to feet down while 10 feet off the ground and slid down the beams to simulate an emergency bailout, simulated an elevator shaft rescue using handcuff knots, practiced the Denver drill, which is more or less a really crappy confined space rescue (only crappy because the tall guy usually ends up getting a face full of the victim's butt, and crappier if you get called to be the biggest unconscious victim of the day and you get slammed around against the walls, hung up by the helmet on the windowsill, and ultimately dropped), and so on and so forth. We also practiced disentangling ourselves, lowering occupied baskets down ladders, and carrying down firefighters down ladders. Next week we'll be doing more searches and a lot of crawling.

Eventually our class historian is going to post the pictures he's been taking. Luckily, he's been in my group all week, so I hope to be able to post a few pictures of me diving off the balcony onto our ladder, or hanging off of it sideways trying to turn around to slide down. After just a little bit of practice, we got my 'company' of 4 cadets down the ladder in 15 seconds, even with getting hung up a little on the protruding beams of the ladder (normally you don't have to worry about that, because the tip of the ladder would be slightly below the windowsill).

This week went by fairly quickly, which is good, because I'm really looking forward to spending some time with family next weekend. I haven't seen my 4 oldest kids since August and I bet I miss them more than they miss me. I can't wait to talk to them in person.

Also, we're in the process of applying for a rental home out in Seguin, a Spanish Fork sized town about half an hour outside San Antonio. It's only a 3 bedroom house, but the 3rd bedroom is a huge loft on the 2nd floor that we can probably separate into 3 or 4 separate rooms with dividers. The house sits in a quiet neighborhood on about 5 acres of land, and it's very reasonably priced for the size. We could sure use any prayers thrown our way so that we can get approved and move in.