Havre Fire Department receives specialized rescue training

The Havre Fire Department is in the midst of a week-long training about rescuing people from buildings and confined spaces using ropes and pulley systems with the help of Glacier Rescue Solutions.

Members of the department practiced Thursday extracting dummy patients using MacKenzie Hall at Montana State University-Northern, first lowering a department member from the roof of the building to the ground, extracting the patient and then lifting the rescuer back up again.

Havre Fire Chief Nathan Courtnage said it takes a lot of people to do all of this, with teams of firefighters operating the line, some on standby with a back up line, a commander to keep the operations running, a safety officer to watch out for potential dangers and others to maintain the equipment.

Courtnage said the scenario they were practicing was not one they'll likely encounter with any regularity, but that's all the more reason to get some training.

He said the makeup of the department is very young so most of their members haven't received training like this before, but they seem to be learning quickly and he's glad Glacier Rescue was able to help them out.

Glacier Rescue, founded eight years ago in Kalispell by firefighters Kevin Shea and Jon Campbell, provides training like this across the northwestern United States including to smaller departments like Havre's.

Campbell said departments like this often need training, especially confined-space training, but don't get it, so their company, made up of career firefighters with between five and 40 years of experience, helps fill that gap.

He said they also train private industry, federal agencies and departments from California to Illinois.

Courtnage said a lot of what they're practicing are scenarios that would be exceedingly rare, but confined-space training will be especially important to have in the event of an emergency at a place like CHS Big Sky, Columbia Grains or BNSF.

He also said Thursday's training, while it is for a very unlikely scenario, will carry over to today's training at the fire department which is for scenarios the department is more likely to encounter at some point.

He said the equipment and set up is a little different but uses the same fundamentals so it will also allow them to gauge if the training is sinking in.

"If we can do it up here at this angle, then tomorrow will be a lot easier," Courtnage said.

He said Saturday they are going to tour a lot of these places in town to get an idea of what they need to do in the event of an emergency, and he wanted to thank those organizations for being accommodating and letting them tour their facilities as part of this training.

He said he also wanted to thank Northern for the use of their building, Glacier Rescue for the important training and Lakeside Excavation for donating materials for their training.

Campbell said the training has been going very well, with department staff hungry to learn, and they are obviously committed to learning something new that will ensure their community is safe.