Ladder Drill Provides Friendly Competition

Anyone living in the area of our main station on North Chapel may have heard the sounds of aluminum banging on masonry walls yesterday evening. Nothing was going wrong, members were just working on ladders skills as part of this month’s training topic on truck company operations. Members worked on various techniques of carrying and raising ladders. Fire service ladders are much heavier than the standard household or contractor ladder, so it requires some practice to become and stay proficient in carrying and raising them. The training session concluded with a short version of the Paxton Drill exercise. For the drill, members were placed into small teams, and had to deploy ground ladders to “targets” of varying heights around the station. There were five available ladders for six targets, and any ladder that is reused at another target must be climbed before moving. So teams had to strategize how to best use the available ladders and personnel to minimize their total time to complete the drill. As is typical for the Paxton Drill, the first team had to deal with the learning curve, and finished with a time of 7min 30 sec. Times improved as each team learned from the previous teams with the last team finishing at 1 min 51 seconds. Training will continue next week with more work on deploying ladders in special situations and working from ladders. It was a good night for training, and good work by all involved.