It sure does get hot in there

I just got back from my Fire Attack Level I course in Comox, more commonly known as "Live Fire". The Comox Fire Department has a fantastic training facility and some top-notch trainers, evaluators, and fire technicians, and as a result, is the "go to" place for training around these parts.

They've plumbed natural gas into a dumpster, a car, and an old propane tank. They turn on the gas, hit it with a spark and put the firefighters to work. The concrete building has no gas, but is used as a simulator by burning wooden pallets in a room.

We started with a few hours of classroom learning, then put on our gear and tackled the car fire. What followed that is something I won't forget for some time.

12 of us crowded into a 10x10' room with a stack of pallets against one wall. The instructor lit up the pile with a tiger torch and we watched how fire behaves and affects the atmosphere of a room.

I ended up close to a corner of the room where heat tends to intensify and after about 10 minutes I was getting really hot. The air that I was breathing was getting hot and my forehead, where the facemask was pressing against my balaclava, was starting to feel pretty burned. When we finally left the room my Lexan visor had melted and was pretty much impossible to see out of.

We ran through all sorts of different scenarios over the weekend which really gave me a new found confidence in being able to control a room and contents fire. I'm still pretty tired as I head off to work, but as they say, there's lots of time to rest after you die.