“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would put a bulletproof vest on,” New Ipswich Fire Chief Meredith Lund said, after her department, along with police officers and EMS personnel underwent “warm zone” training this weekend.
A warm zone is a transitional area between a “hot zone” – an area of potential danger, and a “cold zone” – outside the established danger area where responders can set up and coordinate. In the case of an emergency such as a shooting or bombing, they can be established after the threat is contained or no longer in a particular area.
In mass casualty incidents, minutes count, Lund said.
“As we continue to have these mass shootings, stabbings, bombings, the quicker you can get to people, the better their chances to survive. But the question is, how do you do that without threatening the lives of the emergency responders,” Lund said.
A four-hour training, which was held at Mascenic Regional High School, helped give New Ipswich personnel those skills.
The training was the last piece of a $6,000 state grant awarded to New Ipswich, which included the cost to purchase six bulletproof vests and helmets for emergency personnel, as well as medical supplies including tourniquets and gauze designed for combat zones which contain chemicals to help stop bleeding quickly.
After several hours of online training, police, fire and ambulance personnel practiced practical skills, such as tying tourniquets, assessing and treating wounds and transporting patients from potentially dangerous areas at the high school on Saturday.
Lund has been a first responder for nearly three decades, and has seen the role evolve, she said. In 2001, the landscape changed, following the anthrax mailings and 9/11 attacks, which suddenly created new expectations for what first responders might be walking into.
“I don’t think any of us who have been with our departments a long time thought we’d have to have training like this when we started,” Lund said. “But even though we live in a tiny town, we can’t put our heads in the sand. We’re not immune to it because we live in New Ipswich. We have to be on our game and we have to be prepared.”
And collaboration is especially important in a small town with low staff numbers and a volunteer fire department, Lund said. While this isn’t the first time police, fire, and ambulance personnel have trained together, this opportunity was on a different scale, Lund said, and it was a good chance to establish rapport and open dialogue.
The interaction has already led to a discussion of further collaborative training, Lund said. For instance, over the course of the training, the fire and ambulance personnel were asked, if a police officer was injured, if they knew how to remove their vest and duty belt, or if the department had a policy for how they would render a weapon safe if they had to remove it from an officer.
“It’s something I had never thought of, in all honesty,” Lund said. The departments have already agreed to have a police officer attend an upcoming training so firefighters can familiarize themselves with the police equipment and how to safely remove it if they need to.
Lund said she and New Ipswich Police Chief Tim Carpenter will be reviewing the town’s emergency action plans to see if there are updates that need to be made after receiving this new form of training.
“I think that might be the second-biggest benefit of this training,” Lund said. “We had a chance to get to know each other, talk and see each other outside of an emergency situation. That confidence goes a long way when you’re in a situation where you have to trust each other.”
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.