Tools of the trade

The Homewood Fire Department’s heavy rescue Truck 7 looks like a normal fire engine, but instead of a hose, it is outfitted with ropes, toolboxes, a generator, saws, lumber and even a skid steer loader.

The equipment helps make HFD one of the most prepared departments in the region for almost any type of rescue situation. Homewood firefighters often put their rescue capabilities to work across the state, both as part of Region G of the Alabama Mutual Aid System (AMAS) and as part of the Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Task Force under development..

Homewood Lt. Brett Ashworth said every fire department tends to specialize in a type of rescue based on their equipment and training. For instance, Pelham is highly trained in dive rescues and Calera brings their expertise for swiftwater rescue, he said.

Homewood specializes in rope rescue and structural collapse, but Ashworth said HFD also has the funding and training support to be prepared for surface or swiftwater rescue, confined space rescue, vehicle or machine extrication and trench rescue.

“I would say we’re cutting edge. We have a lot of equipment. We’re very fortunate to have the highest equipment that’s available. With all the disciplines that we do, that we’re involved in, we have to have equipment for each one of those things,” Ashworth said.

That means Homewood is often called upon for cross-department training, such as an April training session at Fire Station 3, on Snow Drive, that had Homewood, Birmingham and Vestavia Hills firefighters training on how to construct wooden “shores” to hold up an unstable building. Ashworth said they hold trainings for different rescue scenarios biannually.

Station 3 has a multi-level training structure built from shipping containers, with walls, stairs and other elements inside, where they can practice navigating fire and smoke, building shores and rappelling. Lt. Alexander Glover said they also train on woodland rescue skills at Oak Mountain State Park.

Ashworth and Firefighter Anthony Whittington led the April structural collapse training at Station 3’s multilevel structure. The trainees were equipped with measuring tapes and saws to learn how to prop up unstable parts of a building with shores built on-site.

“Where it may be structurally compromised, we make it strong, and we move in and do the same thing again and again and again, all the way in”

The equipment on heavy rescue Truck 7, housed at Station 1, is put into use for full search and rescue scenarios only a few times a year, but Ashworth said some elements of Homewood’s technical training are helpful in everyday calls.

“We may perform a rope-type rescue quite a few more times than that a year, … maybe a vehicle into a creek, or something like that, where you can’t necessarily walk to it but you don’t want to rappel to it,” he said.

Major rescues, especially after a natural disaster, often require more manpower than a single fire department can spare. That’s part of the reason Homewood and eight other regional departments have been working on creating a USAR Task Force 2, modeled after Mobile’s USAR Task Force 1, for about three years.

“No department has 30, 40 men that they can go put out somewhere else, so it’s divided up kind of between all the entities in the area. When they activate us, we all come together,” Station 3 firefighter Mike Platts said. “… At that point we just have different uniforms.”

As part of AMAS, participating fire departments in each region stand ready to share their resources and expertise in search and rescue or other emergencies that are too large for one department to handle.

“If something was to hit here, we would be overwhelmed with all kinds of other things going on, so we would need to have help,” Glover said.

The USAR Task Force works similarly, Birmingham Fire Capt. Tobias Jones said, but with an emphasis on training together and pooling resources to act as a single unit for search and rescue or disaster response.

“It goes a little bit deeper than search and rescue,” Jones said.

The departments have spent the last few years building up funding and coordinating their available equipment, including six heavy rescue trucks, two medium rescue trucks and two swiftwater units. Sometime in the future, Jones said, they would like to add doctors, engineers and canine search capabilities to reach a higher task force classification.

USAR Task Force 2 is not officially ready to deploy yet, Jones said, but he’s hoping the paperwork will be complete and the Task Force will pass its evaluation by the end of the year.

Glover said Homewood has been on the scene for individual rescues and for major catastrophes like the April 2011 tornadoes or the tornado that passed through Jacksonville State University in March 2018.

Most recently, five Homewood firefighters — including Platts, Glover and Whittington — and Chief John Bresnan traveled to Bankhead National Forest to be part of the successful rescue of retired Edgewood Pastor Sidney Burgess, 70, on April 9.

Platts, who was part of the three-man team that located Burgess in a steep gorge inside the park, said firefighters are always quick to volunteer for an assignment like that.

“[They] didn’t have to twist our arm to go,” Platts said.

Burgess had gotten lost during a Saturday hike in the forest, and Homewood joined U.S. Forest Service officials and other local fire departments in the search efforts that Tuesday. Despite being on the third day of searching, Glover said they felt confident they would find Burgess that day.

Glover said the firefighters were divided among the various search teams to share their rescue expertise.

“Our guys tended to have more experience and more training, more equipment,” Platts said.

Platts and two other searchers found Burgess by a river on Tuesday afternoon, after he was unable to climb back out of a steeply sloping gorge.

Burgess had only a little food left and had been drinking creek water and sleeping in the open since Saturday, including during rainstorms the day before he was found. Platts said he was mentally exhausted, but cheerful once he was found.

“He had a big smile on his face when we finally did find him,” Platts said.

Glover was part of the team to help administer medical aid while they waited for a helicopter, as the heavily wooded, rough terrain would have made carrying Burgess out on a stretcher a long and difficult task.

“They call it the Sipsey wilderness, … and it’s pretty gnarly,” Platts said.

After Burgess was airlifted, Platts said he probably arrived at the hospital before the search teams had trekked the miles back out of the forest.

Glover said a multi-day search effort for a missing person can often turn into a body recovery instead of a rescue, so they were glad to see Burgess successfully rescued and returned to his family. It was a feel-good moment, Glover said, that made the long hours and physical demands of the effort worthwhile. 

Platts has had to put up with some good-natured teasing about being a “hero” from his fellow firefighters. He and Glover brush it off as the kind of work that all firefighters stand ready and willing to do.

“It’s our job and any of us would like to do it,” Glover said.