Practicing for themselves

If you’re around Santa Ana Heights in Newport Beach the next couple of months and you see firefighters being pulled out of a three-story building limp, don’t worry: Most likely, they’re training on how to handle such a situation should it arise in a real fire.

Through the end of February firefighters from Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Laguna Beach and other cities will complete their Rapid Intervention Crew tactics training, or RIC, at the Newport Beach fire station. Training comes thanks to a $38,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In a two-day, 16-hour course, firefighters will learn in the classroom and in the training building how to react when one of their own goes down during a firefight.

“This is for us basically. Firefighter deaths happen every year. This is to help prevent that from happening,” said Newport Beach Fire Capt. Justin Kime. “Say this fire is booming, things are going on, you don’t want [other firefighters] getting distracted to run and save their own. It’s basically important that all other members can continue what they’re doing and this RIC team will be implemented” to save the fallen firefighter.

The state requires a Rapid Intervention Crew team at every fire, big or small, Kime said. All Newport-Mesa firefighters should be certified by the end of February, he added.

The rescue team requires special training because if a firefighter is down, “usually something went bad, a collapse in the structure, a roof collapse, a floor collapse. For a firefighter to go down, something went terribly wrong,” Kime said.

— Joseph Serna