On March 15, the Howe Springs (S.C.) Volunteer Fire Company was remined of how important it is to be prepared for every type of situation. On that day, rough storms and a tornado brought all their rescue training to the forefront.

Florence County was hit with violent storms that brought heavy rains, 100-mph winds and hail, as well as a tornado. Several calls had come in around the county, including a medical call to which the Howe Springs' ambulance was dispatched. While responding, the ambulance was trapped by a fallen tree and asked that the department's tanker be dispatched to help with the removal. This coincidence in timing proved fateful, as it turned out the paramedics were only 100 yards from where three mobile homes overturned when a tornado passed through a trailer park. A 3-year-old boy lay trapped underneath one of the homes, having been thrown out the window as the trailer overturned. EMS and fire crews were onscene in minutes, assessing the situation and the child.

The child was conscious and able to communicate with the paramedics, but power lines were down and the winds still were strong.

At the time, Howe Springs' chief of four years, Shannon Smith, was at a brush fire. When the call came in, he turned his original incident over to one of his battalion chiefs and headed to the trailer park. The arriving officer, Capt. Ric Collins, had already called for the company's two rescue trucks, but Smith requested additional assistance from neighboring departments. “They had high-lift bags. It fell back onto the lift bags, that was the biggest piece of equipment we used,” he said. “We use those a lot in auto extrication, but we weren't sure exactly how well our bags were going to work with lifting a mobile home.”

Moreover, Smith was concerned with structural integrity of the mobile, which was 25 to 30 years old, he estimates. But for Smith, one of the biggest challenges was trying to keep the scene organized. “[At] a big incident like that, you've got a lot of people coming in,” he says. “And especially when you have a child involved, everyone's heart rate triples. You are trying to coordinate the apparatus coming in and manpower, just trying to coordinate.”

In addition to the lift bags, the fire and EMS crews first onscene had started placing step-and-block cribbing in case the home shifted before a better means of stabilization could be put in place.

“Luckily, the child was straight under one of the windows of the house,” Smith says. “We thought that would give us a pretty good support base versus any other part of the house. We positioned bags on both sides of the child and lifted simultaneously, and as we lifted, we cribbed to support the structure. We had to raise it 6 to 8 inches to get the child out.”

It took 30 minutes to get the child safely out. “Everything just fell in place for him that day,” says Smith. “EMS was 200 yards away, the fire station was a quarter mile from him and we had 25 members within four miles of him when the call came in. Add to that where he landed and the trailer home landed, and all he had was a scratch on his head.”

Although everything fell into place that particular day, that isn't always the case, and Smith wanted to ensure his department was not only prepared for similar situations, but all types of rescue situations that might arise.

For starters, Smith says the department has put more cribbing on its rescue trucks, as well as some oversize cribbing. It also plans to buy some high-lift bags of its own so as not to rely on surrounding departments. Also, Smith says that the department has broadened it research into what they can and can't do with air bags since the incident. More importantly, the fire department sees the real investment in increasing training.

Smith says that in the past the department's rescue training focused primarily on extractions from automobile accidents. But this incident has prompted Howe Springs Volunteer Fire Company to diversify their knowledge, and now members are being trained in technical rescue. Twenty members are trained in basic rope rescue, and Smith is looking to expanding into more advanced techniques, such as confined-space training. “We wanted to get to a certain level in terms of the basics,” he says. “Now we're at that level and we're moving onto more advanced, high-level training.”

The biggest challenge for Smith is making sure his crew is trained up to national standards, especially being a volunteer fire department. “It's hard for a volunteer to meet those national standards,” he says, citing time and travel constraints in getting members into classes. Smith sees this not only as challenge as it pertains to responding to incidents like the one in March, but also for him as a chief. To combat that difficulty, Smith tries to bring as many training classes into the station to cut down on travel time and make attending more convenient for the department's 45 volunteers. In addition, several members even have become certified instructors through the South Caroline Fire Academy to teach those classes in-house.

When it comes to training, it pays to be prepared for all the potential hazards, notes Ed Roper, superintendent of the South Carolina Fire Academy. “There are too many people who think they can just run into these buildings and rescue people,” he says. “But they have to understand and analyze structures beforehand, otherwise they can harm other people as well as themselves.”

All of Howe Springs Volunteer Fire Company's training courses are taken through the South Carolina Fire Academy. When it comes to situations like the one the department experienced in March, Roper says that the training already in place did them a lot of good. Understanding the basics of moving and lifting heavy objects is essential. “But that's what a lot of rescue is,” he says. “Basic understanding of how you have to move things. Of course, collapse shoring classes and some of the basic structural rescue course certainly could help.”

Proper equipment goes hand in hand with training for situations, Roper says, but adds that the equipment on hand depends largely on what a department can afford. There is plenty of high-tech rescue equipment available, but for many departments, especially volunteer departments, the money simply isn't there. According to Roper, deciding on the types of equipment to bring into a department is a matter of balancing what is needed versus what is affordable. “There are basic tools to get the job done, but if you're dealing with heavy structures, it take specialized tools to be able to cut certain products and jack them and move them.” Air bags and shoring equipment are must-haves for any department, he says.

Fortunately, Roper only says understanding good principles of rescue are more important to a rescue situation than the best equipment money can buy. Some of those key principles include understanding load bearing nature, building construction and the limitations of the tools being used. “Too many people try to use the wrong tool and create more problems for themselves,” Roper says.

But in the end, the emphasis is on training, both for Roper and Smith. Roper says that expanding that base and continuing training practices is the only way to firefighters to be prepared for any situation — whether its a brush fire to a trapped child.

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Howe Springs firefighters work to shore the mobile home and communicate with the child.