| On the evening of August 20th, the officers and members of the Bedford Fire Department drove down the road from the Bedford Firehouse to the Perennial Gardens nursery for the monthly drill.
Engineer Graham Glauber and Ex-Chief Joe Iantorno, both of whom work at Perennial Gardens, led the department on a tour of the grounds, pointing out hazards in the case of a fire or other emergency. The tour concluded with a hands-on briefing of the hazards associated with forklifts, skidsteers, heavy trucks, wheel loaders, and work vans.
Following the tour, the department broke down into two groups. One group focused on lifting heavy equipment, in this case, the International 4700 single axle dump truck, and was done so with the high pressure airbags and cribbing. The other group practiced extricating a victim from the tight cab of a Hyundai 720 two-yard bucket loader. Lieutenant Jerome Newman supervised the lifting of the dump truck, while Captain Peter Lazaro led the group extricating the victim, Tommy Farrell, of the Bedford Fire Junior Corps.
At 21:00, the department went back to the firehouse to debrief and share the lessons learned, having successfully raised a heavy dump truck and removed J.C. Tommy Farrell from the loader. Special thanks to Perennial Gardens for letting the Bedford Fire Department conduct the drill, and thanks to Engineer Glauber, Ex-Chief Iantorno, Lieutenant Newman, and Captain Lazaro for running the drill. |
