Photo Shoot: Fire Drills

Steve Heaslip, Cape Cod Times
·3 min read

Fire Drill. The words conjure up memories of grade school in upstate New York when the alarm would ring. We would all quietly form a single-file line by class and evacuate the building, usually into a cold winter day, waiting for the fire department to come and silence the alarm.

There was also the duck and cover drill. The school janitor would walk the halls, cranking some sort of air raid siren and the kindergarten students in Mrs. Cardman’s class joined the rest of the school, curling up under our desks, covering our heads, waiting for the all clear announcement. This was the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s.

Crews advance a line into the first floor before moving it to the second floor during a Wednesday morning training drill for firefighters of the Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills department at a home on Point of Pines Road in Centerville that will be demolished. The smoke was generated from a smoke machine.
Crews advance a line into the first floor before moving it to the second floor during a Wednesday morning training drill for firefighters of the Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills department at a home on Point of Pines Road in Centerville that will be demolished. The smoke was generated from a smoke machine.

October is Fire Safety Month. So designated in the tenth month to commemorate the Great Chicago Fire that started on Oct. 8, 1871. Housing and technology have joined together and in 2023 our living spaces are much safer. But safety never takes a holiday. Elementary school students still walk to their local fire departments to collect red fire hats and recite the stop, drop and roll plan, along with other fire safety tips to take home.

Cape fire departments train year-round with dive drills, ice rescues, hazardous material spills, and live burn drills. The hazards are many and the training is constant. The Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills Fire Department (known as C.O.M.M.) invited me along for a training mission last week. A vacant old cottage on Wequaquet Lake was slated for demolition and the owners gave a nod to the department to use it for a variety of onsite fire training.

A harmless thick smog

A theatrical smoke machine filled the upstairs with a harmless thick smog that reduced visibility to almost nothing. A training scenario was set, second-floor bedroom fire. The first crew in stretched a line well into the first floor, then manhandled it up a tiny set of old stairs. The charged hose sent a stream of water out the broken-out window, as a search began for victims. A second crew moved in to assist in the search.

More: Photo Shoot: Harvest Season

Imagine pulling up at night to a strange house, crawling around on your knees with an air pack on trying to find a victim in pitch black conditions. Hollywood has done a great job of pumping in a lot of light for action fire scenes in films and movies. But the real thing, even simulated, is just a maze of darkness, navigated by hands with about 12 inches of visibility from a headlamp. In short order, the crew had located and hauled a weighted “victim” mannequin down the stairs and out into sunlight of a brilliant October morning.

There is a lot taken for granted in this high-tech age of artificial intelligence and instant everything. As October winds down, it is reassuring to know public safety crews are the boots on the ground just a phone call away, 24/7, 365.

Thanks to our subscribers, who help make this coverage possible. If you are not a subscriber, please consider supporting quality local journalism with a Cape Cod Times subscription. Here are our subscription plans.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Photo Shoot: Training Cape Cod firefighters