Firefighters Train for Confined Space Rescues at Tri-C

Chagrin/Southeast Hazmat Team utilizes facilities at KeyBank Public Safety Training Center in Parma

For first responders, few rescue scenarios are as daunting as those in tight spaces.

If a person is trapped in a confined space like a pipe or a tank, rescuers could be racing the clock against any number of factors — lack of oxygen, serious injury, difficulty in accessing and freeing the victim, and the possibility of injury or entrapment involving the rescuers themselves.

That’s why the Chagrin/Southeast Regional Hazardous Materials Response Team, comprised of firefighters from 18 area departments, arranges periodic confined-space training sessions at the KeyBank Public Safety Training Center, located at Cuyahoga Community College’s Western Campus in Parma.

Fox 8 Cleveland and The News-Herald were on hand for a training session earlier this week.

“We try to use Tri-C’s training facilities at least once a year,” Mark Vedder told The News-Herald. “We brought our toys out here because they have a nice simulator. There are multiple ways we can use this for both horizontal or vertical entries and rescues.”

Vedder is the hazmat team’s director, assistant fire chief in Chagrin Falls and an instructor at the KeyBank Public Safety Training Center.

“Tri-C is very gracious to let us use this facility,” Vedder told The News-Herald. “As hazmat technicians and confined space rescue technicians, we’re required to train in all the types of spaces that we could encounter an actual rescue in, so we have a bunch of those types of spaces (at Tri-C).”

September 26, 2018

Erik Cassano, 216-987-3577 or erik.cassano@tri-c.edu