On Sunday October 18th - the Stayton, Sublimity, Lyons and Gates fire departments held, for the first time and hopefully to be annually, The Santiam Canyon Extrication Expo. The event was created with the intent of providing fire departments in south Marion Country the opportunity to come together and display their individual extrication equipment; and demonstrating how to run and use the different equipment in an emergency situation with staged extrication scenarios.

The day started with each department displaying their individual equipment, demonstrating its unique characteristics, and identifying what the equipment has in common and what is different. Departments also presented specialty equipment and demonstrated how they used it to those departments that may not have the same equipment.

After the demonstrations, Dan Johnson, from Western Mennonite School, provided the group instruction on how school buses are constructed and how to best approach the unique challenges associated with school bus extrication. The information proved to be extremely beneficial since most of the firefighters have had little opportunity to receive specialized instruction and perform hands on training of extrication situations on buses

The firefighters spent all afternoon at the training facility practicing on simulated extrication scenarios. Three separate, and distinctly different scenarios, had been set up the day before. Each of the scenarios was designed to create very special extrication challenges to the firefighters. All involve vehicle lifting and cutting, as well as patient extrication. The firefighters formed two teams, each were assigned a scenario. The third scenario consisted of a school bus that had been rollover onto 2 cars, both teams came together to combine their newly learned skills for this final large scenario. It was a great exercise for everyone from several perspectives: We had the opportunity to see and work with each other’s equipment, which will allow us to be more efficient on scene and we received much need information on school bus construction which will be invaluable if we are confronted with that type of situation.

From all perspectives this was a very good day of training and we hope this will become an annual event for south county fire departments.

We would like to thank Dan Johnson for his excellent instruction, Western Mennonite School for providing the school bus, and STR for the cars they provide to make this day possible.

~ Scott Mullen FF/EMT