It's Official

As of Saturday, 5 p.m., I'm a certified member of my Neighborhood Emergency Team.

At the Final Exercise, we had 4 stations (40 minutes at each) to use the basic skills we'd learned in the 7 weeks of basic training.

Station 4: Triage & patient transport - Yikes, this was my team's first station (we were team 4) & it was the hardest. It was nerve-racking. I had the clipboard so I was the team leader on this one. We had to go into a scene & find out if there were any patients & help them. One of our team members "died" because of a live wire & we had to restart. Another thing we had to deal with was a victim who wasn't injured but wanted to help & was being disruptive. It was definitely a learning experience: planning how do deal with this, team communication, team safety walk first, how do deal with victims.

Station 1: Search & rescue: We had to go into the tower & do a search under smokey conditions with no electricity. Our team really started melding on this one & we had good communication; although we left behind "Tommy" a boy found in the event. Our team couldn't see him on the way back out after the "earthquake aftershock".

Station 2: Fire Fighting - My favorite & again our team was really cohesive. We're not talking about major fire fighting here, only ones that can be fought with fire extinguishers. I really enjoyed this one.

Station 3: Patient Rescue - Our last exercise was to rescue a victim trapped under debris. We got a slow start (you have to get a plan, plus you have to understand the dynamics of using levers/fulcrums & cribbing) but we did eventually get the victim out. However, we missed the child that was also in there. A lesson in keeping your eyes open.

It's amazing...by the end of the exercise our team was really cohesive & I feel like I will really miss them. I can see it would be useful for each NET to have their own exercises so they can meld. I did meet another women who's from the neighborhood next to mine, so hopefully our two teams can network.

After the exercises, we got our certificate from the big honchos of the fire dept., even the Chief was there!

Something I've noticed about firefighters. Police officers in general seem to attract people who want power & control; I'd imagine a lot of psychopaths join the police. But every single firefighter I've met, through this process & in general, is there to help people & save lives. They also have great senses of humor...that must come from seeing death & destruction so often. Just the sight of a fire station or fire truck makes me feel safer. Firefighters rock!