The Sussex Sun
September 14, 2004

Sussex Firefighters to Set Example for State, Country
Village of Sussex-Deputy Chief Tony Emanuele of the Sussex Fire Department watched the first vehicle careen into the second, causing a car-crunching broadside collision.

THE EXTRICATORS - Test-piloting a new vehicle-crash extrication training program are Sussex firefighters (standing, from left) Mike Lyons, Tom Gerstner, Rick Stenson, (seated) Chris Mogilka, Tony Emanuele, Julie Boglitsch and Jerrad Ihlenfeld.
 

The accident was staged, but Emanuele and his six colleagues still had to act fast.

Their job? Get the passengers out of the crushed car before it was too late.

"I really didn’t have time to be nervous," he said. "There was time to just do the best with how we were trained."

Emanuele knew that the accident could easily have been one of the thousands of crashes that occur on Wisconsin roads each year. He knew that the two test dummy passengers could have been among the hundreds of people that die in those collisions.

Now, because of a revolutionary new training program the department is test-piloting. Emanuele knows he will soon be able to save more lives by learning how to get injured passengers out of damaged cars faster than ever before.

"What we’re doing is something that has really never been done in the country before," said John Olshanski, the executive director of the New Berlin-based nonprofit organization Safe and Fast Extrication (SAFE).

The former firefighters who comprise SAFE will teach the Sussex department new tools and techniques in an attempt to demonstrate to the state-and ultimately to the nation- the importance of vehicle extrication training.

Sussex firefighters will participate in three 8-hour hands-on-training sessions, and use a final 8-hour classroom meeting with SAFE personnel to tie together the program’s most important lessons.

They will then return to the Vehicle Crashworthiness Laboratory at the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Milwaukee, where the first collision was conducted in late August, to rescue dummies in a second, identical crash.

"It gives them a much more realistic training environment that they’ve never had before," said Dr. Frank Pintar, director of the neuroscience lab at the medical center, which is affiliated with the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Before the August collision, Pintar and his colleagues placed sensors in the dummies to evaluate the stress on each one’s head and neck – two critical areas- to help SAFE determine what aspects to emphasize in its training program.

Each crash costs about $10,000 to set up, said Pintar. The crash lab receives partial funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said, and received a small pilot grant last year from the local chapter of the Spinal Cord Injury Association.

But, Pintar said, the lab is seeking state or federal funding to "make it an even better program." They tried to make it a state program a few years ago, he added, but said the governor ultimately vetoed the grant.

"We’re gathering more data like this to show and to really demonstrate how effective this training is," Pintar said. "It will hopefully change some minds."

Olshanski said he hopes to gradually involve more fire departments in statewide and nationwide training, as well as to prompt more research labs to study extrication.

"There’s a lot we can do that isn’t currently being done," said Olshanski, who used to serve as a firefighter for the city of La Crosse, as well as on the Transportation Emergency Rescue Committee of the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

He said he has been working on extrication for more than 20 years. The bottom line, he added, is that extrication saves lives.

"It’s common sense," he said. "The sooner you get them out of the crash, the sooner you get them to the emergency trauma facility."

SAFE would like to see firefighters getting crash victims out of the car in 15 minutes or less, he said.

It took the Sussex squad 57 minutes to get both patients "out and on the ground," Emanuele said.

The Sussex firefighters did a "great job," however, Olshanski said, and will no doubt do even better in the next test.

"No two accidents are the same," he said. The firefighters "will learn to pick the proper technique and the proper tools to apply to a situation that is never twice the same."

Sussex Fire Chief Corky Curtis said his department sees between between 75 and 100 vehicle accidents each year, and about 25 of those require some form of extrication.

"Extrication is something that is changing basically on a daily basis," Curtis said. "With the new hybrid vehicles, there are new dangers that we have to be aware of."

The SAFE staff attends extrication learning symposiums throughout the Midwest and even throughout the country. They’re "always grabbing on to new stuff to share with the firefighters in Wisconsin," Olshanski said.

Sussex firefighters have already demonstrated "such a love for their community that they then grab on to as much (knowledge) as they can," he added.

Emanuele also commended his colleagues for a job well done in August.

"This crew of six struggled," he said. "It was tough, but at no point did I see the frustration level picking up or any of them giving up.

"That was awesome to see that team work like that, and continue working until the goal was met-and that was to get that patient out of the car with as least harm as possible."

He said the crew will review a videotape of the August crash with SAFE on Sept 22. All 47 firefighters will start the training program in winter, with a second staged collision no sooner than spring.

"We were offered to wait until spring to do the training, because then we’d be fresh" for the second crash, Emanuele said, "but my comment to the trainers was, "I don’t want to wait until spring because we may be able to use this in the field before spring. We may be able to save a life before then."

"And they told me, "That’s exactly what you’re supposed to say."