JEFFERSONVILLE, Ohio — Jefferson Township firefighters spent Thursday night practicing one of the fire service’s last-resort skills: getting out of a building fast when there is no time left to use the door.
The Fayette County department said in a Facebook post that the training focused on “self rescue,” with firefighters running ladder bailouts and window hangs at the department’s training tower. In a ladder bailout, a firefighter trapped by fire or a collapsing floor breaks a window, radios a mayday and climbs out headfirst down a ground ladder, flipping upright partway down to finish the descent normally. A window hang is the fallback version of the same move, used when no ladder has reached the window in time — a firefighter lowers out of the opening and holds on by the fingertips, buying seconds for help to arrive.
Firefighting instructors teach both maneuvers as a last option, not a routine one — meant for the moment training and tactics have run out and remaining inside a structure has become an immediate threat to a firefighter’s life. Departments nationally have adopted bailout and mayday drills over the past two decades after a string of firefighter deaths in which crews became trapped by rapidly deteriorating conditions with no charged hoseline or ladder positioned for a normal exit.
Jefferson Township Fire & EMS is a volunteer department that covers Jefferson Township in Fayette County, including the village of Jeffersonville, population 1,258 as of the 2020 census. The department responds to structure fires, vehicle crashes, medical emergencies and rescue calls across the township and also runs public education and fire-prevention programs, including a Knox Box rapid-entry program for local businesses, according to the township’s website.
Photos the department posted from the drill show firefighters in full turnout gear and self-contained breathing apparatus climbing out of a second-story window of the training building, working down a ground ladder while other members spotted from below and from inside the window.
The department did not report any injuries from the training and said the exercise was part of its ongoing schedule of skills nights for members.
The information contained in this story was obtained from Jefferson Township Fire & EMS.
