April 25, 2003

     Five East Lake Firefighters traveled to Brooksville, FL to participate in a live training burn on Friday April 25, 2003.  Led by Division Chief Tom May, Lt's Bill Edling, Tom Jamison, and Mark Teolis along with Driver Engineer Jason Gennaro spent the day training with our new thermal imaging cameras.  The goal was to learn how the thermal imagers worked in live fire.  Others that participated in this burn were Brooksville FD, Spring Hill Fire Rescue, and Hernando County FD.  "Live fire drills provide invaluable training for our firefighters, both veteran and rookie", said Lt Edling. 

     The day began with search and rescue smoke drills.  It then progressed to setting fire to one of two rooms and getting firefighters ready for the heat.  The goal was to let the room get hot enough to send flames rolling across the ceiling.  Temperatures typically reached as high as 1,300 degrees in the room.  The key was to knock down the flames, without putting them out, right before the room hit "flashover" (the point at which all combustibles in the room reach there ignition temperatures causing them to burst into flaming combustion).    Once the fire burned through the ceilings, firefighters were pulled out and the house was allowed to burn to the ground. Overall the imagers worked great and we had good time.  We would like to thank the Brooksville Fire Department for allowing us to participate in this great drill. 

Picture Gallery
04/25/03
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