There’s a term for operations like trench rescues that fire and rescue workers know well: low frequency, high hazard events.
Basically, a firefighter may go through his or her entire career and never be confronted with a person trapped in a ditch. But when and if they do get that call, there's something — well, a few things — it'd be good to know.
Just ask Ashland Fire & Rescue Chief John Karns. About 15 years ago he was a firefighter for the Beverly Hills Fire Department when he was sent out to a construction site to help free a man from a trench that had collapsed in on him.
“All of our folks had the training,” Karns said. “We did have one guy who jumped into the trench to help and we're like, ‘OK, let’s just step back,’ and got him out. It wasn’t a body recovery, which a lot of these are. It was a rescue. The patient was viable and we knew that, so to protect him we did a lot of exactly what you’re seeing here.”
“Here” was a flat, yellow, barren turnout above the Ashland Municipal Airport off Dead Indian Memorial Road, where fire and rescue workers from throughout the Rogue Valley, along with a handful of Ashland public works employees and two firefighters from Ashland’s sister city of Guanajuato, assembled Wednesday to practice the trench rescue techniques they had spent the morning learning about in a classroom. Waiting for them on the site was an L-shaped trench about three feet wide and 10 feet deep at the short side, 8 feet deep on the long side, and all of the equipment they would need to complete the task — sheets of plywood, other lumber, ropes, ladders, a circular saw, hammers and nails.