Rescue and Evacuation

In drills we would typically use dummies as casualties. These dummies can be very heavy - up to 120kg. But some of the firefighters in my station are strong enough to lift one of them on their backs and carry them down flights of stairs with their heavy Breathing Apparatus sets on. (I've never really tried doing that before)

Anyway, during yesterday's morning drill, my section was assigned to do R&E. After going in around 40m into the basement, we come across a casualty. But this time, the controllers of the drill decided to use a live casualty. And it's no small one.

Live casualties are soooooo much different from dummies! By just touching the casualty you can know that it's pretty much impossible to lift him by yourself. Furthermore, unlike dummies, which are hard, live casualties are soft and much more flexible. This makes them much more difficult to stabilise when lifting and carrying them. When you swing them around, you can actually sense their pain if you accidentally hit them or see their heads dangling in an awkward position or place them on sharp edges on your body. When evacuating a dummy, you usually don't give a damn even if you hit the dummy on to the wall or if any of its limb caught itself in any obstruction.

It all boils down to mental strength, communication and good decisions to successfully evac a particularly heavy casualty...

I just hope if I ever encounter a similar situation in a real operation, I wouldn't cause the person to die if I had initially found him to be alive in the smoke...

Station 44

My beautiful, beautiful station.

The sight of the falling yellow leaves from this tree while I await for the bus home calms the spirit after a long day of duty...

Dispatch!

It was a seemingly peaceful night in the watchroom of Bukit Batok Fire Station...

*Bzzzkrt!*

The watchroom personnel was unceremoniously awaken from his slumber by a violent buzz coming from the intercom.

The intercom beeped thrice loudly. With his many hours spent in the watchroom throughout his career, he immediately recognised the tone of the beep.

It was a fire call.

Surely enough, the fire coding alarm blared throughout the station.

*Piii~ Poo~ Pii~ Poo~*

The watchroom operator glanced at the wall clock. Dammit! It was barely 2am in the morning. But duty calls.

"Station 44, turn out DO pump, CPL and 2 Fire Bikers," said a sharp female voice from the intercom. "Location... Block XXX, Bukit Batok Avenue X, smoke showing from unit, over."

Calmly, he took the intercom mic and responded to the message from the HQ Control Room. Squeaks could be heard from the sliding pole as the firefighters descended from the dormitories and scrambled on to their appliances.

"Roger... PL441, CP441, Fire Bike 441 and 442 responding, over."

The shutter doors were opened.

"Roger..." replied the voice from Control which was followed a flurry of beeps.

The watchroom operator pressed a button and the fire coding alarm blared throughout the station again.

"Good morning Station 44!" greeted the watchroom operator almost cheerfully. "Turn out PL441, CP441, Fire Bike 441, Fire Bike 442 to location..."

He glanced at the cubicon screen for the newly retrieved incident from HQ. Loud roars could now be heard from the engine of the Pump Ladder as the driver warms up the engine. Beacon lights started to flash throughout the engine bay.

"Block XXX, Bukit Batok Avenue X, smoke showing from unit," announced the watchroom operator before activating the fire coding alarm one last time.

With a press of a button, the traffic lights turned red and within a single minute, all four appliances were out racing towards the incident site.

As the siren from the appliances died out from earshot, the watchroom operator closes the shutters. Hoping it was just another false alarm, he slumped on to his chair and monitors the incident closely on his computer screen...

***

And that is how things are usually like for a watchroom operator.

One interesting point that I would like to note is Callsigns. Why is Bukit Batok Fire Station is given the number 44? And how do appliances get their callsigns?

Well, let's take an example - PL441.

The first 2 alphabets represents the appliance. There are all sorts of appliances in the Force. PL refers to a Pump Ladder, your typical fire engine. Following this fashion, FB refers to Fire Bikes and CP referes to Combined Platform Ladders (CPL).

But wait, why CP441 and not CPL441? Cos apparently the cubicon system can only accomodate 2 alphabets for callsigns, so the "L" had to dropped. Same goes to Breathing Apparatus Tenders, Fast Response Paramedics and Tracked Fire Vehicles (Guess their callsigns?)

The first number in the callsign refers to the Division in which the station is in. The whole of Singapore is divided into 4 Divisions.

1st Div - East
2nd Div - South
3rd Div - North
and 4th Div - West

The second number represents the station number in that division. Therefore, the first 2 numbers on an appliance's callsign determines which station does the appliance belong to. In our example, the 44 in PL441 means that PL441 is from the 4th Station of the 4th Division which is non other than Bukit Batok Fire Station.

The last number represents the appliance number in the station. For example, in Station 44, there are 2 PLs, PL441 and PL442. The 1st PL is usually under the command of the Duty Officer of the station while the 2nd PL is under the command of a Non-commissioned Officer. There also 2 Fire Bikes, FB441 and FB442 and 3 ambulances- A441 (pronounced "Alpha 441"), A442 and A443. With exception of the ambulances, appliances are numbered according to their importance ie. who will be in charge if they are dispatched together for the same incident.

Now, by combining all this, we now know that PL441 is the 1st Pump Ladder from Station 44.

Well then, I hope the next time you see a Civil Defence appliance on the roads you can somewhat determine the type of appliance and from which station does it come from!

Here's the list of all the current 13 station callsigns;
11 - Central FS
12 - Alexandra FS
13 - Clementi FS
14 - Jurong Island FS
15 - Bishan FS

21 - Payar Lebar FS
22 - Changi FS
23 - Tampines FS

31 - Yishun FS
32 - Ang Mo Kio FS
33 - Sengkang FS

41 - Jurong FS
42 - Tuas FS
43 - Woodlands FS
44 - Bukit Batok FS

Question: You see A311 zooming along the street. What appliance is that & where does it come from?

Tracked Fire Vehicle

For those who were wondering how in the world a TFV actually looks like (which is barely visible in the pic in my previous post), I'm not going to show you pictures of one, but an entire video about the Tracked Fire Vehicle!

Features TF211 from Payar Lebar, but somehow in this video, it's in Station 23, which is Tampines...

Actually it's a 2 part video, but I'm only going to emb part 2 since they talk more on the TFV in the second part. For those who are interested in watching part 1 before part 2, here's the link.


Pretty cool, ain't it? Lemme recap some of it's cool features.

- It's actually a left hand drive.
- Has a drenching system in front that sprays the ground and tracked wheels to stamp over the fire to completely extinguish the fire.
- Has a monitor on top of the vehicle which is controllable via a joystick. The monitor has 2 modes - fog and stream.
- Able to carry 1700 litres of water. Mounted in the rear locker is a Tohatsu water pump.
- Contains fire fighting equipment related to bush fires like canvas beaters and chainsaws.

Well, I hope that enlightened you guys a bit about SCDF's capabilities in tackling bush fires.

Standby...

Recently, I almost did not go for any incident at all. Which is good, but also makes my duties sort of repetitive and boring.

But still, if everyone is safe, everyone is happy!

As you can see in this crappy picture, in times of peace, our proud fire engine, PL441 (PL - Pump Ladder) will be on standby. The shutter in front of the pumper is always closed unless there is a dispatch to prevent trespassers...

The motorcycle on the far side is FR441, or more affectionately referred to as "Romeo 441". It belongs to the Fast Response Paramedic. Yep, paramedic on a bike! This enables us to administer pre-hospital treatment as fast as possible even during peak hours. These paramedics ride crazy fast! But safely, of course! It's a Super 4 after all.

The picture closer to us is FB441, one of the Fire Bikes in station. Fire Bikes always go out in tandem. Typically, control will dispatch FB441 and FB442 together. If only one Fire Bike is available, then the Fire Bike will go out with a pumper. Fire Bikes are cool... I like the smooth noise that they make, especially when the ignition in turned on and the silent vroom when they dash out of station. Not to mention that they have pretty lights too. Anyway, like the FR, the FB was also introduced for fast response even during peak times, which will enable us to get fire ground info and mitigate whatever is going on as quickly as possible.

In this other crappy picture are the other 3 appliances in station. (The third one is barely visible at the back on the right of the picture).

The closest to us is the Combined Platform Ladder, CP441. Probably one of my favourite appliance for various reasons. This rig is dispatched for high rise fires, ship fires etc. Anyway, this the cage can reach a working distance of 32m, which theoretically is about 10 storeys high. This appliance is a hot favourite for station visitors. If you come, you might be lucky enough to get a ride in the cage!

Next to the CPL is the Breathing Apparatus Tender, callsign BA441. As the name implies, it carries a great number of breathing apparatuses and air cylinders. It is dispatched when there is a fire involving premises with high fire load eg. factories. In other words, it only goes out when there is a potential that the fire is going to be big. Therefore, the BAT rarely goes out of station, which is one of the reasons why the BAT is my least favourite appliance...

The appliance that you can barely see at the back is the Tracked Fire Vehicle, TFV, callsign TF441. This thing goes out of station even at a rarer frequency compared to the BAT. Why? It is designed to fight bush fires. It's actually quite a cool appliance, imo with it's tracked wheels akin to a tank and the water monitor perched on top of the cabin. Since most bush fires in Singapore are of negligible scale (eg. small patch of grass on fire), this vehicle is rarely tested under the scale that it was initially built for. It did do it's bidding during the recent Bukit Batok bush fire earlier this year, but apparently throughout the end, its performance was a bit disappointing. Maybe it's because the hill was too steep anyway. And most of my seniors seem to agree that this vehicle has a lot of room for improvement.

Well, that's all for now. I hope you guys enjoyed my little Station 44 virtual trip. Come to my station on Saturdays! We are open 9am to 12pm. Do come early or you'll miss the good stuff. Maybe next time I'll risk showing other pictures of interesting stuff in the station...