By Daniel Nash | The Courier-Herald
Firefighters demonstrated the Jaws of Life Saturday, to a crowd of locals primarily comprised of young children and their families.
The occasion was the 16th annual open house hosted by East Pierce Fire and Rescue. The event took place at the Bonney Lake headquarters.
Three cars sat on the makeshift staging area in the back of the headquarters, tipped in various compromising positions for three demonstrations throughout the day.
Battalion Chief Pat Beers emceed the event. Lieutenants Jason Sanders and Justin Doyle and firefighters Scott Lynch and John Selby demonstrated the steps to extricate a trapped person.
Prior to the demonstration, Beers shared some statistics about car crashes collected in studies from 1978 to 2007. Approximately a quarter of all car accidents were caused by males in the 21- to 30-year-old age group. More car accidents happened during the daytime than at night. And 70 percent of car accidents involved males behind the wheel.
“I’m sure none of that comes as any surprise to the ladies out there,” Beers said.
The firefighters began by making an “inner-outer circle” around the site of the crash, looking for gas leaks, explosive features like airbags and other dangers. They then set to work stabilizing the vehicle with metal arms and smashing the window glass.
The front window was removed with a special saw designed to cut glass.
The demonstration was temporarily stopped during the arrival and landing of an emergency rescue helicopter, as part of a separate demonstration.
“This is actually not an unusual time to have a helicopter,” Beers said. “We frequently use them in trauma situations. The goal for rescue workers is to get the patient to proper medical facilities within 60 minutes. Sometimes that requires a helicopter.”
As the demonstration reconvened, Beers leaned with an arm against the sideways car to show how well it had been stabilized. The demonstration car had been tipped over by hand by the firefighters before the open house, but the various factors in a car crash could put a vehicle in any number of precarious positions. Any vehicle has to be made as safe as possible before rescue workers can administer medical aid.
More car accidents happen on two-lane country roads, like those found around Bonney Lake, than on fast-moving highways, Beers said.
The firefighters finished the demonstration by using cutters to shear the metal window frames at the sky-facing side of the car and pull the roof off like the top of an aluminum can.
Beers took questions from children in the audience.
“Why do you need to take the roof off?” asked one girl.
“Can’t you just flip the people out of the window?” a boy asked.
“Believe me, we would do that if we could, “ Beers said. “But sometimes, a car will just be so banged up that none of the doors will open. By using these tools and having them on all of our fire engines, we can make sure we have all the room in the world to work with.”
