Lekaro

Today I’ve been in the woods with my FIG at a Civil Defence exercise. And I guess it couldn’t have gone much better.

We started out at 9 at Grorud where the base of Civil Defences in Oslo and Akershus are based. As we arrived we were directed directly to the depot to get new boots. I’ve been looking forward to testing the new boots and after a day of walking, running , splashing in water and carrying stuff I’m very pleased.

The new boots have a good fit, are soft and flexible and not to heavy. Yet they offer good support for you ankles and cot a composite “steel cap” to protect your toes. And they’re gortex. Which at least initially is a good idea, we’ll just have to see how well it works after a few years of abuse

Then we had some time getting to know some of the new members that has joined the group and to re familiarize our selves with the firefighting equipment that we got on our car. We opened a manhole, went down and attached a  valve to the hydrant and the a 2.5″ hose to get the water out of the hole. And then everyone took turns going down or practising the attaching of the valve in a training rig.

Then we went to  Steinbruvannet, a little lake just a few minutes from the base. We started by getting out what we needed for the exercise from our own car and from a larger truck. And we finally have some useful equipment to the ATV that we have. They now got a small trailer for it, big enough for one fire pump (Ziegler Ultra Power) and some hoses and other equipment that you would need. This is great since the ATV can get to places where out ordinary truck cannot go. Which means less carrying for us Which is good considering the pump weights around 190 kilos.

Then we split the group in two and have a hose connection relay race. We started out by laying out a 4″ hose (25 m) and then a branch pipe, which reduces the 4″ to 3 x 2.5″ from there we had one 2.5″ hose (25 m) to a new smaller branch pipe which is split into two 1.5″ connectors, and then finally one length of 1.5″ hose (20 m) and a nozzle at the end. Then each team member had to start by attaching the hose to the pipe then running to the next connection and do that up and so one all the way to the top, of course the track ran uphills, and then on the way back down he/she would disconnect all the connections again preparing for the next in the relay.

Out group was one short so in the heat of the moment I decided to take a second run in the end just to be fair. But the few seconds of hesitation caused us victory. Shit happens

After that we did some drills on how the pump works, starting stopping, running on full auto and we simulated a feed hose breaking to se how the pump reacts and what to do when this happens. And i guess that when we are in the woods pumping like mad that will happen from time to time.

The last part of the exercise was to lay out a standard fire fighting hose arrangement to see how it works and how well we can wet the bushes and threes. One pump can pump around 2000 l each minute and the nozzles will handle about 500 l each so a standard layout have three nozzles connected to one pump. Then we have something in backup if we need it.

All of this in brillinat sunny weather, couldn’t have been any better

But now it’s time for bed, tomorrow is going to be a long day to.

Up early to play and the Susan will arrive later to spend the weekend in Oslo.

This was my initial reaction today after seeing a news story today. The story was about a guy running in the hills, got ill, and on how is family means that slow response from the police killed him.

This got me thinking, shouldn’t people take some responsibility of their actions ? Why did one of his friends call his mother who called 1-1-2 ?

Would this entire story had a different ending if they had done things a bit differently?
First as the heading says, why call an electrician if you need a plumber. If they had called 1-1-3 directly they would have had a dispatcher that was a health professional. And if they held on to the line the emergency services would have a better understanding of the situation.

Of course the police might have done things differently to. It was said that they waited quite a while before asking for assistance from the red cross. I’m always baffled that they keep calling for the red cross people when they have civilian defence forces groups that are trained for and suppose to do these kind of tasks.

All in all it boils down to this:

1. Call the correct emergency number. In Norway that would be:

   • 1-1-0 : Fire Brigade
   • 1-1-2 : Police*
   • 1-1-3 : Medical emergencies

2. Remember to state who you are, what has happened, where you are
3. Do NOT hang up unless you are told so by the dispatcher.

* This is the international emergency number and will get you help in all emergencies. But whenever possible calling for what you actually need would help remove any errors in communications.

As I promised I’ll post some pictures from the burn here. It’s kind of scary to see how fast it actually goes.

This first picture was taken about five minutes after we lit the place up. The barn was torched inside up against the wall to the right in this picture.

This next one was taken 3 minutes later.

The 12 minutes after this shot I took this picture. We have now been bruning for about 20 minutes

And at last I took this one about 26 minutes after the place was lit up.

We’ve done it, we planned and executed the burning of a 800 square meter barn. Woppee.

The whole thing was a part of the course I’ve been attending the last couple of weeks, yesterday we went out to the place in the morning to have a look at the place and to see what other buildings we needed to protect from the fire. 

As you can see the barn was quite close to the main building, about 40 meters, and even closet to a newer tool shed. But we managed to protect those. We set up four fire pumps at the lake which is about 250 meters to the east of these buildings, three that was supplying water to hoses and three water walls, and one in backup just in case. then we rolled out something like 1.2 km of 4″ hoses and a then some 2.5″ hoses.

Then after a few problems with the pumps and a few broken hoses that needed replacing we were ready to light up place. The fire was lit in an old sofa in the north end of the barn at 10:25 and after about 8 minutes the whole place was ablaze. At 11:13 the last south wall finally collapsed inwards as planned and at 11:35 there was no more danger that the fire would escalate outside the foundation of the building so the fire pumps were shut down. It’s kind of scare to se how fast the fire grown and how destructive it is, but it’s also nice to have experienced this so close.

I’ll se if I cannot create a timeline of the pictures I took as the fire progressed some day when I get back home.

well then the first day of my two days courses has ended, and so far it looks like it’s going to be a good two weeks. The people here are nice and the whole course plan seems to be interesting. I’m hoping to be able to do some updating here from time to time.

Today we’ve had some general Civil Defence information, done a short presentation of ourselves for our class, had some information on the rules regarding uniforms and starter on some team leader exercises, and tomorrow wwe’ll continue with more of the same. Should be good.

The best part of this course will probably be next Wednesday when we are going to lead the people doing their basic training when they are burning down an 800 square meter barn. Should be fun.