City fire crews get refresher course in low-slope rescues

By Lethbridge Herald on July 29, 2021.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Mitch Fowler, centre, gives city fire and EMS crews training in low-slope rescues at the Sugar Bowl Thursday.

Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald
abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
Emergencies can happen in any type of terrain and on Thursday city fire and EMS teams trained for low-slope rescues in scorching heat at the Sugar Bowl.
The Sugar Bowl in south Lethbridge just off Scenic Drive, popular with tobogganers in winter, provided a good training venue for new recruits and veteran crews as they worked under the guidance of Lieutenant Mitch Fowler and Chris Jorgensen, team leader on the technical rescue team of Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services.
Several times during the year, crews are called to assist cyclists or endurance racers who have incidents in the coulees and in the training exercise, crews practised techniques with the assorted equipment used in challenging environments.
“We practice in principle the techniques they’re going to use,” Jorgensen told media before the training started.
“Everyone is cross-trained in everything…some of the things are getting more specialized in terms of HAZMAT or swift water rescue and technical rescue so those teams will have specific members that will train additional to what everybody else does,” he said, noting crews need to practice in the kind of conditions they will experience on the job. That means in the 34C heat on Thursday or in cold winter weather.
“We need to practice in the conditions we’re going to play in so there is no too hot, there is no too cold, there’s no too windy for us to respond. We always try to balance it out. We don’t want to drain the crew out doing two hours of exertion. Everyone is going to be very, very exhausted and compromised, Jorgensen said.
“We can do cardiac arrest with our eyes closed, vehicle collisions, not a problem, extrications because we do them all the time. It’s the events that are a few times a year that certainly require much more training to keep everybody up to speed,” he said.
Of the techniques being practiced Thursday “we often train for incidents that happen very very rarely….even if it only happens once a year, that’s one time we need to be ready,” he added.
“Everyone needs to be a jack of all trades in everything. We ask a lot from our people that we do a little bit of everything and try to keep up with it as well as doing regular calls which can be certainly challenging.”
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