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New Canaan firefighters on Tuesday underwent a specialized type of training that prepares them for safely packaging and hauling a patient up a steep embankment, such as after an individual is ejected from a motor vehicle or falls down a hill in the woods.
“The idea is to get a rescuer down to the person in a safe way, do a quick patient assessment, stabilize the patient, take care of any [cervical] spine precautions, package them in a way that we can get them back up the hill,” said New Canaan Fire Department Lt. Duffy Sasser, who underwent the training with several other career firefighters as well as a member of the volunteer company.
“We try to pull that sort of gear out at least a few times a year, because—although that is a very low-frequency event for us—it is something that, when it happens, you need everybody on the same page when it comes to putting all those systems to use and it comes to using the proper knots and all the things that have to come together to make that work,” Sasser said.
The volunteer New Canaan Fire Company undergoes the same training as the career firefighters, on the same schedule, he said—in this case, working the same ropes and knots systems—“because everybody has to be hands-on and it’s important that we are consistent across-the-board.”