Advanced Firefighting School, Earle, NJ
Advanced Firefighting School, Earle, NJ
As part of my Naval Reserve duty, I participated in a Merchant Mariner safety course. Part of the training included a one day practical training trip to firefighting school. It is a real shame that the flames don't really show up that well in any of the pictures, but let me assure you, the fires were quite real. At sea I have been involved in fighting two fires. Most of the ships I have sailed on have had a fire during some point in their career. So even though we took the training as sort of a vacation, everyone took advantage of the practice.
Our two instructors are on the left. In the baseball cap is "Torch." He was actually banned from the school for six months for creating fires that were "too realistic." Well he did not cut us any slack. After all it is no fun unless it is somewhat scary.
This was a combined deck and manifold fire. There was a jet flame of pressurized propane that needed to be put out before we could attempt to put out the oil fire on deck.
That's me heading into the engine room. The first thing I was able to see inside through the smoke was flames lapping up against my face mask. At that point I opened up the foam nozzle and shot foam all over the place. That was really cool.
Fireman Fred.