Category Archives: Training

Stokes Basket Training with T18

Yesterday T18 came up to Station 41 to train on the new Stokes Basket SOP. The stokes basket is the wireframe basket that we use to move injured people from difficult to reach places (e.g., rooftops, down and embankment). BCoFD came out with a new SOP on how to set it up so we spent some time training on it.


Squad Training at Rockdale

Today S414, E412, SU418 and T18 met at Rockdale for rescue training. Rockdale setup a vehicle on its side and another under a box truck. Crews worked with the squad tools, in particular as we have some new tools on there. It was a great time for all.

Many thanks to Rockdale for hosting us.

Squad Training

This past Saturday members trained on the squad. There are numerous new tools that were not on our old squad that we have to get familiar with before it goes in service. Hopefully over the next week or so we will be able to get everyone through to be proficient on the apparatus.

Air Bag Training

Last night some of the juniors and some of the regular members participated in an air bag training session with one of our senior members. The air bag training went over the high pressure airbags (for example, for lifting a car a little bit) and the medium pressure airbags (for lifting a larger object a higher distance). We had a short class room session and then a longer hands-on session. For the hands-on session we lifted the dumpster off of an egg (without breaking it) and then lifted a car while placing cribbing underneath for protection.

Rope Training

Our typical calls are EMS related, fires and motor vehicle collisions. But there are times where a call might require us to use ropes. It could be anything from helping get someone out of a tree to tying off a stokes basket to help guide an injured person up a hill. So, rope training is an important skill to have. Last night a few of us did some impromptu rope training under the guidance of a member who was the Captain of the technical rescue team in Baltimore County.

E413 to FRA for FF1 Class

E413 went down to the Baltimore County Fire Rescue Academy to support a firefighter at RVFC who is in the Firefighter 1 Class. Sunday was the first set of “burns” where the instructors set small fires in the burn building and the students advance a handline into the building and put the fire out.

Engine Training

Last night E412 and E413 went out to train on pumping the engine and handline operations. We have several members who recently finished classes and so took them out to go over our engines specifically. We hooked up to the hydrant, pulled an attack line, flowed the deck gun and had one engine pump the second engine.

Heavy Rescue Training

This morning we did a heavy rescue training at Rockdale Towing and Peter’s Body Shop.  They had set up two scenarios, one with a school bus partially on its side and leaning on a car and then a motor home sitting on top of a car. We don’t see these types of scenarios often (thankfully for all) but they are things that can happen, so it was great to be able to train on them in a controlled environment.