Firefighters Train Ahead of Annual Convention

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Erma Volunteer Fire Company. "You have to rely only on your senses."

Hayden was one of 80 firefighters from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware who came to Wildwood to take part in eight-hour hands-on training classes being held ahead of the start of this weekend's annual Firemen's Convention.

The training sessions focused on two areas - safety and survival skills and forcible entry techniques.

A decrepit two-story wooden rooming house, scheduled for demolition, served as the training facility for the safety and survival class.

Inside, instructors used pieces of drywall, wire contraptions and other methods to stimulate what firefighters could encounter on a real-world fire call.

"It's a typical building a firefighter might encounter," explained Wildwood Fire Capt. Dan Speigel, who organized the class with Mount Laurel Fire Department Battalion Chief Greg Collier.

"It has maze-like areas where you may become disoriented, multiple floors, multiple apartments. With smoke and high heat, it's easy to get disoriented," Speigel said.

To make the stimulation as realistic as possible, each firefighter, covered in standard gear including a 30-minute airpack, wore a breathing mask that has been lined with wax paper.

"It creates zero-visibility similar to what they would face in a fire," Collier said.

The firefighters then entered the building and moved through a series of stations.

At one location, they had to find their way to a wall that had to be broken through using axes or whatever tools they had handy, then they had to climb through the small openings and finally "sound the floor" by using an axe to make sure there was a floor ahead of them.

When they found it missing, they would maneuver across floor joists as instructors hit them with pieces of drywall and fencing simulating the collapse of a floor above them.

"Knees on beams," yelled one instructor. "Knees on beams."

"We're training firemen how to stay alive and get out of buildings," said instructor Dan DiRenzo of the Camden County Fire Academy Safety & Survival Unit.

DiRenzo said about 100 firefighters dies across the country each year in the line of duty.

That is one of the reasons Speigel said an effort was made to incorporate some training element into the annual convention weekend.

"What we wanted to do was bringing training to the convention. It's not just about buying T-shirts," Speigel said of the convention's purpose.

About 7,000 firefighters, joined by family and friends, will descend on Wildwood this weekend during the annual convention.

E-mail Trudi Gilfillian: TGilfillian@pressofac.com