Bethel Fire Dept. Incorporates Football as Training Tool to Practice Skills in Ladder Drill

Report by Paula Antolini
October 6, 2018, 11:11PM EDT

 

Bethel Fire Dept. Incorporates Football as Training Tool to Practice Skills in Ladder Drill

Message from Bethel Fire & EMS:

At a drill recently held at the Bethel Fire department we used a simple game of catch with a football to show how stable you can be when on a ladder using leg locks, which is a skill when mastered, make a firefighter very stable and able to work safely. This was after we went about raising different size ladders ranging from small roof ladders all the way up to the 40 foot beast with tormentor poles.

Deploying ladders is one of the very basic but critical jobs we perform and it was a good chance to review lifting techniques, carries, and short staff considerations such as a single person raising a 24 or 30 foot ladder, and because everything that goes up must come down, safe lowering.

We also worked on climbing ladders with a variety of tools such as pike poles, halligan bars, axes, and a variety of saws used for roof ventilation.

At the end of the drill we went over working off a ladder and broke out the football.

 

 

 

 

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