Ground Ladders - Paxton Drill | Firefighter Training

In this episode, "Training To Perform Under Pressure" instructor, Adam Ritsch instructs firefighters regarding knowing how your ladders and your district match up. Firefighters in this drill are required to throw six ladders to six different windows in two minutes.
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 You shouldn't just be throwing ladders to windows with no rhyme or reason. You should know exactly what ladders you have and based on where the fire location is, if you do or don't have victims, um, do a quick size up and have a specific plan in mind. You size it up, create your plan, and you throw this Gladys of that.

We get really good, especially if you have a fixed facility of knowing your second floor windows and what ladders you need to throw there. We get dialed in like, Hey, I need to throw a 16, or if I throw my 24, I just gotta go two clicks. Why? Because it's basically a foot between each rung and you get really dialed in on that.

And you never get the practice of trying to gate your distance or, or estimate your elevation. Right. I like the pre-planning and that's one of the other big benefits I enjoy outta this drill. All it is is just six ladders, different height windows, two people working, and then all we're doing is timing.

When we say we're timing them, only thing that that's gonna do is it makes them. Work faster and out of their comfort zone, we're not trying to put pressure on them. They're putting pressure on themselves. You'll start seeing little mistakes and then they'll come back and they'll correct those. Time will start in the grass and once you hit that final window at a good climbing angle at the bottom of the sill or yell, you're done.

We'll stop the time. You can leave ladders in place or you can move them if you so choose. Once you get it at a relatively decent climbing angle, and the ladder hits the bottom of the window sill like we're calling it for a rescue. One of us will yell out, you're good. And you can either leave that ladder or rotate it into another, another position, because you're working in twos, you can throw two ladders at once.

Or if it's a bigger ladder, you can throw both, both people on the same ladder at the same time. Friendly competition amongst yourselves, right? I, I've dare say, you'll be surprised how fast you do this. All y'all were right there at that two minute mark, right? Or less. Less. If an hour and a half ago we would've told you that you're gonna hit.

Six windows, different heights, different size ladders under two minutes, what you told us. Okay. A lot of y'all have never worked together, right? But you came together under the same training and did the, the biggest thing, hopefully you solved why this is relevant as far as it's not all second floor windows at the same height.

That's not always realistic because of. Topography changes, flower beds, you name it, right? Whether the house has a crawl or, um, what have you, it, it changes. So get dialed in with estimating your ladders. Why they, why they got the farm they got, because their estimations were spot on. They didn't have to reset anything every time they dropped it in place.

It was spot on. That's critical though, right? If someone's hanging outta that window screaming for help, one, you are gonna be ramped up. But two, you've gotta be spot on. You need to be able to drop that thing into place and be able to rotate it to where they're at. You don't wanna be four feet high or four feet short.

You're not doing any good, and you're wasting a lot of time that they've got their honey buns getting lick busting fire, right?

Video by: Fire Spotlight
https://www.firespotlight.com/

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