Savannah Volunteer Fire Department led a training exercise at Lighthouse Baptist Church on Highway 441 on July 18 to be better prepared for a scenario where they needed to get water quickly to a large building in the county and conduct search and rescue operations.
“In Savannah’s fire district, we do not have a hydrant,” said Lt. Chris Bowers, training officer, Savannah Volunteer Fire Department. “Everything is either hauled to the scene on a fire truck and then refilled outside of the district and shuttled back to the to the fire or supplied with multiple tankers coming in from other departments.”
Joining in the training were firefighters from Sylva, Cullowhee, Balsam and Qualla, as well as Jackson County Emergency Management and members of the Women’s Auxiliary to support the firefighters.
“We set up Sylva’s ladder truck in the parking lot to simulate a high flow scenario. like an actual structure fire in a large commercial building,” said Bowers. “And then we transported water from a hydrant in Dillsboro to this location with multiple tankers from multiple fire departments.”
The firefighters also conducted search and rescue training inside the church. They often get chances to search houses, but larger buildings enhance their search efforts.
“When we go in and we stay low, it’s just like anybody coming out of their own house,” said Asst. Fire Chief Brandon Green, Savannah Volunteer Fire Department. “If your house catches on fire, you’re going to stay low because the cooler air is down here. So, as we go in, we have to be in that cooler air as well.
“Temperatures up around six feet or higher, you’re looking at temperatures 800 up to 1,200 degrees. We’re down here on the floor, down on our knees, and we’re in that 100 to 200 range which keeps us cool, makes our visibility better so that we can get to where we’re going, and we can see a little better that helps keep our firefighters safe.”
Green noted that while firefighters typically train with full gear, today’s exercise was a bit different…for a good reason.
“We didn’t have everybody put gear on inside the church,” said Green. “It’s a Saturday. Lighthouse Baptist Church has been so good to us to allow us to come in – a special thank you to them for allowing us to do that. But we didn’t want to dirty up the church. So, our turnout gear has carcinogens on it that we get in the fires. It’s cancer-causing stuff. We didn’t want to scatter that through this nice, beautiful church, so we left our gear off. We come in, we got down and crawled in just our regular clothes for that reason, to keep the church clean.”
Jackson County Emergency Management assisted with the exercise, establishing incident command and maintaining communications. Women’s Auxiliary members were also on hand to support the firefighters with food and drinks.
Fighting a fire in a large structure like a church or commercial building can take three or more times the amount of water as a house fire. Being ready with such a sustained increased water flow is critical, and just as important is training like this to be able to conduct search and rescue operations in large buildings.
“These multi-company operations like this really help prepare us to work with our neighboring departments,” said Bowers.
Green concurred.
“It helps training, helps us to learn each other’s faces,” Green said. “And when we get into an instance like this where it is actually on fire or a search needing to be done, we can come together and work together better as a team than if we hadn’t.”
