On Wednesday evening members were once again on station for our weekly training. With construction on going in the back of the station crews took advantage and use the former hall and kitchen space to do a large area search drill.

The room was darkened and filled with "smoke" from a smoke machine so that crews had as close to real conditions as possible. A crew of 4 was required to enter the building and use the new large area search bags that were just placed in service on our trucks crews had to search the entire area for any trapped occupants.

During the training members would randomly become "trapped" and required to call a mayday on the radio letting their other crew members know that they needed assistance. Several areas were set up that would allow members to practice breaching walls as well to allow them to safely exit the rooms they were trapped in.

The large area search bags that were placed in service allow the crews to secure a rope to the entrance of the building or room they are going into and then deploy the rope as they enter the room. There are 3 other smaller bags that the other crew members can each have. They use these to clip onto the main line and they then have 20ft of rope so they can go around in 0 visibility and search the area and still be able to quickly find their way back to the main line.