Members Complete Basic Rescue Practices Certification

On Sunday, July 30th, 2006 28 members of the Westwood Fire Company completed the Pennsylvania Department of Health "Basic Rescue Practices" course which has been held over the last month.

Basic Rescue Practices is a 68 hour rope intensive course which was developed in the early 1980's by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. This class involves various types of rescue scenarios with minimal attention to vehicle rescue. Most of the curriculum in this course has become dated and it is quite difficult to locate a class instructor who is still qualified to teach this class. This class is one of three certifications needed to obtain certification on our new Rescue truck through the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Luckily, through Mr. Bob Grunmeier who is the Executive Director of the Bucks County Public Safety Training Center, we were able to arrange to have this class presented for our members at our station. Since the material in this class is becoming outdated, we were able to combine the lecture and training sessions of this course into the NFPA 1006 Core Rescue Training requirements for National Certification of our members.

The first few sessions of the course consisted of classroom lecture and a powerpoint presentation on various rescue systems. Other sessions included EMS care and triage, stokes basket operations, webbing and rope systems, hauling and anchor points, and rappeling.

On the final day of class, we travelled to the Coatesville Train Station to rappel off the bridge.

The class culminated with 2 separate rappeling sessions on back to back weekends to allow for more time for each member to get comfortable and experienced with the rappeling systems. Our members will be testing out for National Certification in Core and General Rescue Requirements in the coming weeks.

Special thanks to Chief Grunmeier and our Instructors, and all of our dedicated volunteers who spent all of a very hot July working to obtain this certification to help us be more prepared to protect our community.