Montreal Firefighters carry out high rise exercise.

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Firefighters from Montreal's Station 3 conducted a practice exercise on Saturday July 24, 2004. The purpose of the exercise was to familiarise the crew with high rise interventions, the scope of the tasks involved and, finally, to familiarise them with the particular building used for the exercise - 1 Place Ville Marie.

The scenario for the exercise was a fire on the 23^rd floor with the elevators not working and the possibility of persons still on the floor and the only means of access being the stairs.

The crew, consisting of a captain and two firefighters, used the north stairwell and as equipment had a three inch hose pack and two 1-3/4 inch hose packs, three spare air bottles and a "metro bag".

It took 18 minutes to reach the 22^nd floor. The 2-1/2 inch connection nearest to the north stairwell on the 22^nd floor was was used and the hose line taken to the 23^rd floor to extinguish the fire. This part of the operation took seven minutes. Owing to the large area of the floor there was not a sufficient length of hose to cover the entire floor.

This type of intervention requires several crews for the initial attack. The first-in crew has, as their job, to give a size-up of the situation and following that, depending on the severity of the fire, to contain or limit the spread of the fire.

Photos by Joseph Glover

Participants in the exercise were:

• Firefighter François Paillé
• Firefighter Marc-André Jobin
• Firefighter Michel Jalbert (pump operator)
• Captain Christian Paradis
• Operations Chief Denis Gagnon
• Place Ville Marie Fire Prevention Technician Stéphane Dorion.