CPR, fighting fire, and crawling through smoke: Reporter goes through Anchorage FireOps101 training

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The Anchorage Fire Department invited community members to take part in their FireOps 101 training, giving participants a firsthand look at the work firefighters do every shift.

Each participant was paired with a firefighter to shadow them throughout the day, as they moved between four rotations: CPR, second-story window rescue, car extraction and engine basics with fighting a real fire.

Training starts with medical calls

Sean McMillan, Anchorage Firefighter and EMT, said the daily EMS calls firefighters run are the department’s bread and butter. He said the department responds to about 50,000 calls a year in the Anchorage Bowl, with about 35,000 of those being EMS calls. Roughly 350 of those calls a year are cardiac arrests.

“This is the point of this whole exercise is to help you guys understand that we need a lot of things to do what we do,” McMillan said, taking participants through an EMS call simulation.

Instructors said the department swaps out compression providers every two minutes because effective CPR is physically difficult to sustain longer than that.

“We have one of the highest in the country. I think we’re right around 45–50% CPR survival rate, which is incredible,” said firefighter Tony Piecuch. “I think it comes from our training, our algorithms that we use for cardiac arrest and, truthfully, by standard CPR started early.”

Structure fire simulation

Participants also took part in a technique firefighters use when searching for a fire victim believed to be in a specific room.

Firefighters demonstrated breaking a window, clearing the glass, sounding the floor for stability and climbing headfirst into a smoke-filled room, before participants attempted the rescue.

“I’m going to yell breaking glass. Break out my window, anticipating all that heat and smoke is going to be coming out,” a firefighter said during the demonstration.

Sen. Dan Sullivan was at the event and said the rescue simulation was eye-opening.

“We did the training to go into the burning building and going up the ladder going in that second floor,” Sullivan said. “Then you get in the building and you can’t see anything.”

“Going in the fire window on the second floor head-first was a little scary,” Amy Tullos, NuVision Federal Credit Union Vice President, said.

Piecuch said fear is something firefighters work through with repetition.

“I think that’s basically accomplished just through training, right? You just do something so many times that you kind of remove the fear part, and you’re just essentially doing your job,” Piecuch said. “I think right now the hardest part of being a fireman is probably the long nights — lack of sleep.”

Extrication and hose training

Participants also worked through a vehicle extrication scenario using the jaws of life and other tools, practicing operating a fire hose that flows 265 gallons of water per minute.

“I was very surprised how heavy those things are ... learning how they actually do it ... was really a great learning experience,” Sullivan said, referring to the jaws of life.

Tullos said the exercises gave her a new appreciation for the department’s teamwork.

“They really told us how much they depend on each other. It’s real brotherhood,” Tullos said. “Each person has a job. On each assignment, they already know what that’s going to be, so it’s not chaos.”

Firefighters lean on each other daily

Piecuch said firefighters’ schedules and living arrangements create close bonds among crews.

“We all live together, we work together, we eat together,” Piecuch said. “We travel in packs.”

Anchorage Fire Officer Jason Dolph said the department has held the FireOps 101 event six times, typically every other year, since around 2012.

“Anchorage firefighters have a compelling story to tell, and now all of you get to be a part of that story,” Dolph said. “This is difficult, challenging work, and we need the whole community to rally behind the fire department and the firefighters to continue to make this organization successful.”

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