MIAMI TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Miami Township firefighters are spending this week and part of next month practicing how to pull one of their own out of a burning building, running Rapid Intervention Team drills that residents monitoring emergency scanners may overhear, the fire department said.
The exercises focus on how crews would locate and remove a firefighter who becomes injured, trapped or disoriented while fighting a fire, according to the department. The same techniques double as tools for rescuing civilians, the department said.
The department described the training as broad and intense, covering radio communication, how to move an incapacitated person and how crews size up a building and work through problems as they arise.
Crews are training with their normal department radios rather than a separate practice channel, to keep the drills as realistic as possible, the department said. That means residents who monitor scanner traffic may hear the exercises play out over the air.
Rapid Intervention Teams, also known nationally as firefighter assist and search teams, are standing crews assigned to stay ready outside an active fire to search for and extract firefighters if something goes wrong inside. The National Fire Protection Association and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration require departments to keep such a team in place during structure fires, a standard that grew out of past incidents in which firefighters were lost, trapped or disoriented with no dedicated rescue team on scene.
Miami Township Fire & EMS provides fire, rescue and emergency medical service across the township in Clermont County. Its full-time paramedics and EMTs work 24-hour shifts followed by 48 hours off, and the department also fields a technical rescue program trained in rope, swift water and ice rescue.
The information contained in this story was obtained from Miami Township Fire & EMS.