Current events

Nationwide Professional Success of NPP Fire Service

NPP Fire Service team was placed first in the category of voluntary and institutional fire departments at the 7th National Professional Contest of Fire Brigades and 3rd National Professional Contest of Emergency Detection Teams held in Paks, 6-7 November.

Congrats to engine commander Ferenc Széles, team members János Lacza, Tibor Váncsodi, József Farkas, István Wolf, vehicle driver Gergely Bartha and trainer István Schreiner.

As fire & rescue head István Schreiner told us, the contest comprised four stations where teams had to complete tasks in rotation. The professional contest started with the completion of a 100-point test sheet to assess, separately, theoretical skills of the engine commander, the team of 4 and the driver.

Competitors had to solve their first complex team task in an abandoned winery plant building situated by highway no. 6. The task comprised manoeuvring fire engines and removing door locks with a disc cutter. This task also included intrusion into a room, climbing ladders and ascending to a twin platform where firemen had to cope with a fire imitation and snatch a spine-injured person on stretcher from the fire. From the upper level, firemen reached the first level via ladder where they hit upon the injured one in one of several rooms under smoke. To save him, they first had to successfully open a dummy lock.

Routine competition of vehicle drivers consisted of driving in darkness at two different speed limits metered by Traffipax. Organizers flooded vehicles with thick water mist preventing drivers from seeing through the windscreen, so they could only overcome the situation with the help of teammates. In the opinion of experienced drivers, this routine competition was a really big challenge for all since, as they said “not one of them had yet met such a really tough track”.

The obstacle race featured psychical components that forced firemen to face a diverse scale of challenges. Among others, they had to climb a 2 m high palisade and get across a crawling course wearing full personal protective equipment and work through a course of psychical challenges wearing their protective masks taped over. Another task was a sprint run with a can full of some dangerous substance and then identification of the substance by its features. Also, wearing the respiratory apparatus with darkened googles was a great psychological challenge along the obstacle course, so firemen could only get along by feeling their way. The task of simulating a damage event at a high place also required ultimate skills since firemen had to mount a jet and lower it down to a glass plate without breaking or even cracking the plate.

In addition, firemen were required to keep to contest rules all the time in the course of performing various tasks, thus maintaining a high professional standard of the race. Such rules included, for example, that firemen were allowed to enter rooms only if wearing appropriate protective equipment but, first of all, they had to de-energize the building. Non-observance of contest rules on the obstacle course was punished by scoring penalty points as course referees rigorously watched competitors’ adherence to safety rules.

by Mrs. Anna Lovásziné
November 2009