On Wednesday night July 17th members of East Brandywine Fire Company were at the station for our weekly drill night. The members originally had a drill planned for outdoors but mother nature had other ideas and thunderstorms coming through the area forced us inside. But that doesn't mean we couldn't still train.

Captain Ora set up a training in the back room to allow newer and older members alike to become more familiar with our SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus)

Members teamed up in groups of two and each person was given a mask that they were to wear that would hinder their vision just like in real fire conditions. Each member then had their air packs in front of them but each was completely disassembled. The members with limited vision had to use their other senses to put the air pack back together, don it and begin breathing air. Once each member was breathing air from their bottles they then had to learn how to hook up to each others bottles in the case that they ran out of air or their equipment malfunctioned.

This is a critical component to firefighter safety and also something that all members are required to know how to do to be allowed to run RIT (Rapid Intervention Team) calls for the company. A RIT team is solely on the scene in case a firefighter becomes hurt or injured inside a structure and the need may arise that the members will need to "buddy" breathe with that firefighter. Station 49 carries a RIT pack with a 60 minute air bottle just in case something like this happens.

Members also practiced hooking up this bottle to their partners air pack system as well.

The training was a very good test of skills and showed some of the newer members just how hard it can be to do these skills in limited or zero visibility.

Approx. 23 members attended this training while another 5 were at Minquas Fire Company in Downingtown attending their pump operators class.