Emergency responders learn safety

When public safety personnel roll out to a highway accident, their primary focus is on saving lives and protecting property.

They also need to be careful not to cause another accident or destroy important evidence of the accident to which they are responding.

Safety and scene preservation was the topic of an evening session last week when some 80 personnel from local fire districts, Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), and Oregon State Police (OSP) gathered at the Sisters Fire Hall.

Fire districts represented were the Sisters-Camp Sherman Rural Fire Protection District (RFPD), Black Butte Fire District and the Cloverdale RFPD.

“Focus of the training was incident safety and scene preservation, particularly on vehicle accidents, and specifically on the Santiam Pass,” said Fire Chief Tay Robertson of the Sisters-Camp Sherman Fire District.

“The reason why we go up there is because there has been an accident and people get hurt,” Robertson added. “Often it is because of bad weather and poor driving. Because there has been one accident it means there could very well be another accident. For our department, we are interested in keeping our people safe while we perform our work”

David Moyer, incident response supervisor for ODOT, spoke to the group on how to set the scene up so that another accident does not happen, either to emergency responders or with other vehicles. Moyer covered vehicle placement of emergency vehicles and traffic control.

Joe Craig, senior trouper with OSP, offered information on scene preservation to allow OSP to reconstruct the accident, both to prevent future accidents and to gather data for any legal action and insurance purposes.

“OSP treats every vehicle accident as a crime scene,” Robertson said. “That means emergency responders have to be careful to preserve the scene and yet get close enough to use our emergency equipment, like hydraulic tools, to make a rescue.

“This was a huge number of firefighters to get in one place for any training,” Robertson said.

Each agency has its own mission, but it is important that each agency also be aware and responsive to missions of other agencies involved in an accident, Robertson stated.

“Emergency medical people are focused on life safety, extrication of victims from a vehicle and keeping people alive; ODOT wants to keep traffic flowing safely, and OSP wants to know why it happened and who is going to jail,” Robertson explained.

“Good cooperation and good communication will make all of that happen.”