Cicero firefighters said they could have completed a rescue practice exercise in 15 minutes, as opposed to the half hour it took, if they hadn’t done things so much like they were in a classroom.  

That’s one lesson that was learned during drills at the Cicero water tower on Laramie Avenue and Roosevelt Road last Tuesday morning as part of the technical rescue training of the Illinois Terrorism Task Force grant program.

Firefighter Andrew Michaels said there’s a lot of difference between the book and reality.

“When you do things by the book, things take longer because you’re putting in redundant safety systems — you’re doing a million checks,” he said.

But Michaels decided to make more of a judgment call in the scenario of rescuing a man down in the midst of a chlorine leak. He climbed up the 30-foot built-in ladder inside the water tower, reached the first enclosed platform, and then proceeded toward the second enclosed platform 6 feet higher to grab the 180-pound dummy slung over another set of ladder steps and bring it down to the first enclosed platform until further instructions or help from the second rescue team.

“When I muscled that dummy down, perhaps I should have had some fall protection for him and me but I figured, ‘You know what, it’s only six feet, it’s not that far down, I’m just going to go get him.’”

Yet Lt. Brian Kulaga, who headed up the exercises, said while the ability to make judgment calls is a must, technical rescue teams are checked on how well they followed the book.

"Even if a rescue was a success, afterwards the state (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) will run through a checklist, and if we didn’t have, say, fall protection, we’d get demerits on an evaluation of how we did,” Kulaga said.

Kulaga was also concerned with unforeseen issues like equipment problems that could interfere with a rescue mission.

While the first team waited on the first enclosed platform for the second team to join them, the second team was on the ground dealing with getting the air supply on the lines to work before they finally came up with lowering equipment and a stretcher, which was necessary because spinal injuries were assumed.

Also, communication between the two crews was hampered as sound echoed in the stuffy air upstairs in the steel water tower. The firefighters’ oxygen tanks continually beeped and masks were further sound barriers.

Michaels couldn’t quite make out exactly what a firefighter from team two was yelling out from seven feet below. 

“It is frustrating; you’ve got to rely on hand gestures and intuition to an extent,” he said. “But we’re all on the same page, and we do these exercises to get on the same paragraph.”