Innsbruck, Austria- September 9, 2004
Second day of the Fire Fighing School. One of the first exercises we did was climb up some tower like building and go through a rescue. Basically putting some saving equipment and getting us down as if we were in a building fire or something. Pretty cool as the equipment was very safe and secure. Put my mind at ease if I were ever in a 10-story burning building and some fireman wanted me to go out the window on whatever they had. Pretty interesting exercise.
Later they surprised us with the next exercise. In a group of 5 we were brought to another emergency situation where a man (150-pound dummy) had fell down a hole and we had to rescue him. One of our men jumped down the hole, and I simultaneously found a ladder while another found a rope. We were able to pull him out of there. Interesting, although I admit I'm not too well knowledgeable on how the proper ways would be to get a man out of a hole without injuring him more.
The next exercise of the day was 5 of us in a car. They tied up the driver's legs and arms.. and shoved our car in between two other cars with a toe truck. We were trapped inside, and then they threw a bunch of smoke through the windows and had some guy presume the passerby role and screaming everyone get out of there its going to blow up. When we first collided, no one in the car did anything and the tied-up driver did his role as injured. I was in the backseat behind the passenger and rolled down the driver window across the car. It didn't see anyone else was doing anything. But everyone basically climbed out the window from the backseat. We left the injured driver next to the one in the passenger side seat. With the screaming guy in the window, I just exited without thinking of helping the person in the passenger pull out the driver, and before long all 4 of us were out and the driver was still in there. Ultimately we had to pull him out as well. It was interesting and a learning experience though. First off, you have lots of time to get people out, and probably always some spectator is just going to be yelling for everyone to get out without assisting at all. Very interesting exercise though.
The last exercise of the day was the most interesting. They got a few COBRA guys from some anti-terorist unit or something like that. Then they took all the students in the bus and had several armed gunmen hold up our bus. We were all tied and blindfolded and taken hostage. Ultimately we had to shift buses and just went through everything as what it would be like to be a hostage. Very interesting exercise as you just couldn't do anything in that situation. Apparently a few of the students opted not to participate, and were quite in shock watching from a distance. For us who participated, it was all audio as we couldn't see anything. I thought the exercise was great. It basically was the conclusion to our fire fighting school exercises. All great experiences though.
Well, that concludes Week 6 here in my Innsbruck Semester of this Graduate Program. Next week I am taking a class called "Cyberdemocracy" which will be very Internet-intensive (my favorite kinds). I'm looking forward to that class. When that class concludes, it will ultimately conclude my entire time and experiences here in Austria. Then its a weekend between Austria and the beginning of the final and last semester in Castellon, Spain. Should be interesting.
Next Journal Entry in Austria:
October 3, 2004
You can email me at:
Wintermoon2@yahoo.com