It’s pitch black when they shut the door and firefighters start crawling on their hands and knees with 50 pounds on their backs through spaces just two feet high. The exit is three levels above them.

Fortunately for the firefighters yesterday, they were involved in a training exercise, not trying to find their way out of a blackened, unfamiliar building where the wrong move could result in the loss of their lives.

Instructors from the Massachusetts Fire Academy sent six Gloucester firefighters and six from other departments through a trailer set up to simulate a blind experience crawling through a building. They felt their way through the maze, searched for hatches to climb to the next level, and tried to access the exit doors.

Yesterday’s hands-on training capped a two-day session the state Department of Fire Services held at no cost outside Central Station that also included a search-and-rescue situation and how to follow a hose line to retreat from a building.

“It’s primarily entry level, teaching firefighters search techniques and familiarization moving with gear,” said Gloucester Deputy fire Chief Miles Schlichte, who coordinates the department’s training.

Inside the trailer, the fire academy instructors can adjust the course of the maze with movable wire walls and can create “trap”

situations where a firefighter could get through a hatch above and find no exit except back down. Those taking the course feel their way around corners and above them until they find a hatch to move up. Once on the third level, they have two doors to open to the exit.

“It’s a real confined space with trap doors,” Deputy Chief Thomas Aiello said. “And it’s completely blacked out to simulate being inside a building.”

Each firefighter was in full gear with helmet, masks, air bottles, coats, pants and boots.

Jerome Frontiero, a Gloucester firefighter and department mechanic, emerged from the trailer and chatted with two Newburyport call firefighters, Matthew Houle and Marc Ouellet, about a latch he found on a hatch above him that would not open. Gloucester firefighter Linda Henry went through the training trailer twice.

The trailer was one of three training stations used yesterday, fire Capt. Tom LoGrande said. Another station consisted of fire hoses laid out on the garage floor. Firefighters stuffed their hoods into their helmet and face mask to blind them and then simulated retreating from a darkened building by feeling their way back along the hose line.

The third training area was on the fire station’s second floor. With their hoods in their masks again, they simulated a room sweep with one firefighter maintaining contact with a wall and several others stooped over and grabbing a partner’s pant cuff while searching along the floor for trapped occupants.

“It’s a great simulation. The only thing missing is the heat,” LoGrande said.

On Tuesday, the firefighters participated in classroom training that gave them an overview of the techniques and skills they were to practice during the hands-on session yesterday.

Tom Bogart, a part-time instructor with the state fire academy and a lieutenant in the Lynn Fire Department, said the academy takes the trailer all over the state.

“This is meant to go to the most remote areas, whether in a field or in the woods,” he said of the trailer. “It’s been to the four corners of the state, and it’s one of the more popular training props.”

The Department of Fire Services, based in Stow, has a number of other props, including trailers that allow for contained fires. Schlichte said he plans to have the academy return in the fall with a burn trailer.

Only off-duty firefighters could attend the training. “If they’re stuck in there and we get a call, where are we?” Schlichte said, pointing to the trailer.

Besides Gloucester and Newburyport, firefighters from Andover, Haverhill, Malden and Stow participated in the training.

Source