ZFD Holds Bus Extrication Training

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – The Zanesville Fire Department works multiple crews, 24-hour-shifts and during the downtime they discuss safety practices and plan for training sessions that can cover a wide variety of dangers they might encounter. 

Zanesville Fire Department Assistant Chief John Rodman was attending a training session where firefighters were learning how to extricate injured victims from a bus.

“We have a lot of our extrication tools, Sawzalls, chisels, K-12 saws, all the different types of extrication tools we use. And we’re practicing scenarios of a bus wreck. So they’re cutting holes in the bus, they’re learning how to stabilize the bus, just going through some different scenarios of what can happen in a crash,” explained Rodman.

Rodman noted that buses may vary in many ways but their basic construction is pretty similar and they’re all very well built to maintain passenger safety.

“There really isn’t anywhere unsafe to cut on the bus. A lot of the parts of the bus are reinforced. So those are the harder parts to gain access through. The easiest parts of course are the windows that the kids can actually pull the handle and push the window out. And then a lot of our scenarios are us working off that opening and making it bigger,” Rodman said.

This three-day training session covered three shifts and had approximately 12 firefighters on each shift. The fire department aims for a training session at least once a month that can range from structure fires to boating accidents and everything in between.