Aircraft Rescue & Firefighting with Station 35 - Unscripted Episode 16

[Music] so we have a 7:30 conference call with the battalion chief all the company officers in that battalion and then I have a I have a morning meeting with microdata o'clock in the morning to review what we need to accomplish with it and what I figured out from the Training Bureau or the station life what we need to do and I review my objectives for the day again what priorities safety operational issues or futuristic items that we'd like to accomplish today so I have that 8 o'clock in the morning and hopefully by that time guys are kind of eating breakfast or already have a tan or getting that done so we can start our day out and then based on whatever the objectives we outlined either we're going to start tackling those or we all can always sprinkle in calls throughout the day so as today happened I think we got a call one time in between the morning meeting so unfortunately those morning meetings can be a two-hour event because you catch a couple calls in between there [Music] our 35 Hyundai make a huge story commercial structure with something showing no big categories mightily not that this judgment about this imminent example [Applause] make a two-story commercial structure nothing showing nobody's the author strategy and then cleaned it [Music] [Applause] so this is a fire prevention month October's fire prevention month so we really make a heavy impact and we really tried to get out there into the schools this month for us today we kind of had the younger age of the spectrum was more of touring the fire truck and then seeing somebody put firefighter gear on which was I believe helpful just in case he did have an accident the future they were trapped in a fire they would know that we are friendly people even though we're in our bunker gear and look a little different so yeah we did pre plans today and on average I would say station 35 s gets about 12 to 15 pre plans a quarter and they are very important and when you look at like the NIOSH one of those line of duty desk factors is lack of pre plans so what we do is we we head out into the streets and we have a pretty much it's a five to ten-minute map of that facility and it outlines in you know where you're going to get in where you're going to get out doors fire suppressant fire suppression systems where's a fire alarm panel where's the fire department connection and those kind of items that we're going to need on a fire so we can get in route to that call I poke their pre-plan on the computer and the fire firefighters and back to the truck and pull that up on the iPad and we can see what we're getting into so it's really a great thing and it helps us get ahead of the power curve this is station 35 it's major major intersections are rapaho Road in Peoria here we house tower 35 it's a 95 foot aerial well so we staff that with four personnel and we also cross staffed to airport fire trucks red one and red two which is the other side and currently we have battalion chief 32 here station was built in 1983 I mean actually back then it actually housed administration in one portion the firefighters in another portion and fleet maintenance maintenance in another portion of that building so as we travel from downstairs to upstairs there's 35 stairs so if you forget something downstairs it's a long ways to go down and get it and come back up so this is captain Hagar's wall he was a captain a station 35 and as seen on the wall here he died on September 10th 1989 in a roof collapse and in District fire they had a reformed search-and-rescue trying to find fire and the fire they had trouble locating it was a weird construction to the building and he he died in 1989 so the crew here they had a memorabilia wall there was a box and we really wanted to try to make it look a little bit better so the guys here really invested a lot of time and we had this custom-made sticker bill here and just did some different things to really try to memorialize captain Hager and remember him and his sacrifice he made to us so that's the captain hangar wall the other wall here kind of representing our community here at station 35 we have the Denver Broncos training facility in our district so with that portion here the guys again they put all the time in we pretty much moved with the Broncos name into here as you'll see with the the blue and orange this is actually a signed jersey from Von Miller we got from the station from them were stationed 35 custom made and then this is a picture here of station 35 in the Super Bowl parade when the Broncos won so the Avalanche the Colorado Avalanche practice right behind our station so we decorated this well this what this continuation of all here and the Avalanche colors and we've actually had a couple sign sticks numerous pucks and different memorabilia that they have contributed to us to help represent the community here [Music] here it's pretty much we kind of went with the military theme we've got a patch wall we have a nice little patio to sit on we have a grill trigger so we cook our food need out here for needed so take advantage of the the planes coming in or taking off at night it's pretty amazing and pretty awesome this is an avalanche penalty box from behind us where the Avalanche practice and it was donated to us so if you had to put someone at penalty box you could do it here is that part of the discipline area not part of the disciplinary action only for fun but we do have a penalty box a station 35 we actually have 14 bedrooms and that goes back to the day of when there was numerous apparatus here we could house a lot of people so we've got the main hallway we've got another hallway down here and another one down in the quad they call it a lot of guys prefer that room because it's quiet and dark spike it's battalion chief's office and bedroom this is my office all we have is curtains so the curb provides a little bit of separation but no door so there's no a lot of privacy in the station but at least you have occurred in your room so some of our busier times here we were in calls all night long and hence am i now Richie all night long so city inside joke we also have inside jokes we have a ninja exit here and the kids every time kids here they always they always notice a sign I kind of just ignore it now but every time we have a station tour the kids are like where the ninjas at so they notice it this was ministration upstairs and it has since changed into a large workout facility that was created in 1992 here so that is we've actually got a super gray workout area and we're super fortunate to have this workout facility here so physical fitness for firefighters is to me it's the same as training it's the same as whether we're doing a rope rescue training or host training physical fitness is training and we have to do it every day the importance of fire fighters especially when you look nationally and every every year there's a substantial amount of firefighters that died from heart attacks so our big focus is to make sure we get in here every day and do some kind of working out to stay in physical fitness stay in shape for ourselves hopefully make the retirement enjoy life with our families but also for the citizens to be able to do the job because it's a very strange job so an air alert one is a notification they just call the station and say something may be happening nailer 2 is actually a response to the airport standby for some kind of issue somebody's reporting a I mean an oil light or some kind of small issue but they do want to stand by and in error three is actually a response there's a guaranteed emergency and they need us to respond or there's a crash a fire so with station 35 what we'll do is out of our four personnel on the tower two of us the engineer and myself will jump on red one which is the the big airport aircraft rescue unit and then the two fire fighters will get on red two which is the smaller airport rescue and in route what we're looking for is we talked to port five which is our communications at Santana Airport and we're getting information what kind of aircraft is it were they gonna land what's the problem how many souls are born how much fuel is onboard and so we can start looking at our response and saying is this enough do we have enough ambulances enough fire suppression unit responding or do we need to rethink our resources as far as what's coming so as we get that notification and who's coming in route and then I have a pamphlet I look at what kind of plane is that are there any concerns where's the fuel shutoff or any-any trying to get ahead of the game prior to getting there so usually when we get to Santana Airport if I arrive first and the time she's not there I set up Centennial command and will operate on alpha 15 radio channel we have a designated staging areas for the airport and the other airport station does too so we stage at our designated areas if it's just a staging weight otherwise if it's actually a crash location we'll get an escort from port 5 which is their ground operations support for us declares an emergency for a variety of reasons depressurisation they're having a faulty landing gear indication they tell the tower that they are declaring emergency at that point and then the tower makes the decision to which level of an alert they would like to give out to us and so for this for an example they'll give an alert level to and from there they will call us on the radio and say to my callsign for the duty manager that's on is port five so at that time that information is coming down to us and then at the same time it's going to South Metro dispatch met comm and they're giving that information to the appropriate station that's gonna be responding and from there we are jumping in this truck here and we are heading out onto the airfield and gathering more information and that one of two things usually happen either that aircraft to land safely and then they'll the tower will ask them if they need any additional services or an emergent more emergency services and they'll most likely if they landed safely they'll say no and then they taxi to parking will follow them to parking get some more additional information from the pilot or else there's the other scenario which wasn't we don't like is if they actually have crash when they get here and if they do have a crash on airfield what poor fives job is to do is to coordinate all the emergency response that comes out on the airfield so we're the conduit that everything runs through between South Metro and their traffic control tower so we basically it's our job to make sure we get South Metro fire out to the scene safely and across all the movement areas in conjunction with getting those clearances with air traffic control tower in terms of the best scenario for an alert 3 that was probably the best one that we could have ever dreamt for and hope for and that's due to a few factors and the fact that the pilot had ample time to diagnose the problem the problem was it was a faulty landing gear he couldn't get his landing gear locked in place he told the tower about the problem the tower called me down on the right called me on the radio told me about the problem so we started immobilizing South Metro to come out to the airfield while he circled around the airport trying as many different ways as possible to try and get that landing gear locked down and eventually after about think about a half an hour so he'd exhausted all options he was running out of fuel but during that time of him diagnosing we were able to know that we were gonna deal with the gear up landing aircraft so we got all the appropriate response South Metro from station 35 as well as station 44 were already on scene parked and ready to go ready to rock and as soon as he teiis before he touched down I had coordinated with the tower that as soon as he touches down we're gonna show this runway closed and then I need a clearance for all emergency response to cross taxiway alpha so they said yep that's approved and that's a planning process that's a communication between me and the tower and then they give me that approval and as soon as we right before he touches down I say show runway 3 5 right closed they say it's closed and then I get on the other handheld radio and I talk to South Metro and tell them that all responding equipment is clear across taxiway alpha out to the aircraft and at that point I say was one of the best-case scenarios because this happened during the week where we had a digital ops personnel on duty sometimes if there's only one person that's on duty that's to coordinate all of that it can be a little bit stressful and daunting considered so excuse me so much communication that day we were able to have ops personnel escort station 44 which is on the south end of the airfield out to that aircraft as well as myself at our alpha 8 response points so we had by the time that aircraft touchdown and get into the dirt we had our few nuts on scene with probably within about one minute and the pilot did an exceptional job as soon as he touched down he shut off the engine so we had no fuel no fuel leaks no fireball no no big fire was the best scenario you could ever imagine for our three aircraft when we concerned about with aircraft and the differences in those fire trucks 'as well they carry a lot of water and they actually have turrets on top so one of the concerns on aircraft is different than the regular streets is we don't have fire hydrants on the runways or on the taxiways so when we these fire trucks hold a lot of water we have 2,500 gallons of water on red one 1,500 on red 3 and then we have 300 on red - so we got a lot of water and a lot of HR left foam so we have water to cool the fire foam to suppress the flammable vapors by fuel and then we also have purple K which is similar to a fire extinguisher to inhibit the chemical reaction of fire so when we look at those we use them synergistically to affect operations at the airport so we're not required so we're not a part 139 Airport to actually conduct fuselage training or mass casualty training but we like to do it anyway because it's great practice for when we do have the real thing and so every about three years we do a mass casualty accident where we do the worst case scenario possible for the airport so for us it's always a situation where it's involving two of our largest aircraft that have a mid-air collision that comes out here and it happens at night so you're having to deal with nighttime conditions and it's always usually in the worst the hardest part of the airfield to get to to get crews out - and we do that training and it usually involves it involves our department operations Department South Metro Fire with all their ARF apparatus rat Bell County Sheriff's Office matcom was long with the FAA and we do that training in the way else of a team of volunteers that come out and we actually have we simulate as best as we can people on the ground that are you either walking wounded or they're injured from from the accident and we love to do that training just because we love to be as most prepared as we can be at all times and it's the best way to do it is to practice Centennial Airport is extremely busy we're the second busiest general aviation Airport country even though we don't have commercial scheduled flights we have about 340,000 operations here annually and that equals 930 takeoff and landings per day it's about 23rd overall if you count all the commercial airports that includes like coherent SFO and and and Atlanta we're 23rd overall of all the airports so Centennial Airport was created primarily as a reliever to Stapleton Airport in the early to mid 1960s Stapleton airports traffic was increasing and the reliever Airport to take off some of take some of the business traffic and recreational traffic and relieve that from the Stapleton Airport itself at George George McKenzie Wallace he was the visionary for the Denver Tech Center and he wanted a general aviation Airport to help support that growing Business Park and now we have 21 business parks around Centennial Airport we produce about 1.3 billion dollars in economic impact to the surrounding community and so we're an integral part of the southeast business business area so Centennial Airport sees a broad range of different types of aircraft it ranges from military jets to business aircraft we have five different flight schools out here at the airport and we also have a Department of Defense contractor that operates out of here and we have a lot of medevac flights and we actually have two Colorado Division of var prevention and control aircraft out here multi-mission aircraft that are based here yeah we're in the preliminary stages of design a new admin building out here that'll be both an admin building and a community building so we kind of want to get back to where we have a central location for the airport community and the surrounding community to come and experience the airport with with the increased security at at all airports across the country including Centennial it's a lot harder to get people out to experience aviation and so we think that building will help bring the community out to the airport to it to appreciate that emerged in one of the guys was doing he was in charge of the RF program the airport rescue firefighter program and I'm like hey can I I'd like to help you out so he invited me along and we went to school and I was like this is pretty cool so just in general interest in aviation and while I'm interested in it I am actually more interested in the smart guys that I bring along the team so we have some of the guys have been pilots de-icers mechanics just really smart guys so I like the station oh yeah you definitely have a family here and guys to take care of you and you take care of them

Channel: South Metro Fire Rescue Centennial, Colorado

Views: 694,215

Keywords: South Metro, Unscripted, SMFR, Fire Rescue, Ride along, ARFF, Airplane Crash, Aircraft, Firefighting, Aiport, Operations, day in the life, colorado, denver, FAA, plane crash, emergency, Pierce, Tower

Id: LACTdcE0y8s

Length: 22min 19sec (1339 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2018