Wayland Fire Trains to Rescue One of Its Own [Video]

The Finnerty's building at the corner of Main and West Plain streets saw more action last week than it has in a very long time.

Wayland firefighters used the back dining rooms as the setting for a couple of training scenarios during which they practiced what they learned during classroom portions of Rapid Intervention Team (RIT) training.

“The goal here is to find an injured, down or missing firefighter,” said Wayland Fire Deputy Chief David Houghton, explaining that firefighters have additional gear that could make their rescue more complicated. "It's new training for us."

Houghton said the department had money left over from a grant it received last year to purchase 16 new portable radios. When the department got a better-than-expected deal on the radios, there was money left over for the training.

"We hated to lose the money, so we were able to reapply,” Houghton said. "The training was something we needed to do."

brought in Joe Landry from the Maynard Fire Department and Bill Miller from the Hopkinton Fire Department to conduct the training. Houghton said those particular individuals were selected from a list of possible trainers due to their departments' similar size and makeup.

Of Wayland's 30 firefighters, 24 full time and six on-call, 20 took part in one of two training sessions last week. The lengthy training involved several hours in the morning of classroom instruction and example scenarios.

After lunch, it was off to Finnerty's for some realistic scenarios.

The Finnerty's building has been condemned, meaning firefighters wouldn't enter the building in a fire situation, but would focus on protecting nearby structures.

The teams stayed in the safest part of the building for the training that involved Miller and Landry setting up various scenarios using a life-size dummy dressed in firefighter gear.

Firefighters duct-taped their masks to simulate the low-visibility that smoke would cause in a real-life situation and went through all the steps of carrying out a firefighter rescue, including losing one of their own team members in the midst of rescuing someone else.

"Just because we're the RIT team doesn't mean we can't get ourselves in trouble," Miller said.