First responders in Indianapolis refine lifesaving skills

INDIANAPOLIS. (WISH) — Members of the Wayne Township and Indianapolis fire departments Tuesday refined their skills to rescue people trapped in machinery and other items.

Fire and rescue crews used mannequins in scenarios — rebar through the front seat of a car, a hand stuck in a meat processor, a child stuck in a swing, a person trapped in a picket fence — at the Wayne Township Fire Department’s training facility. Trainers from Massachusetts, New York City and Kentucky shared their skills.

Pat Nichols, a district fire chief from Boston, said, “All of these scenarios we’ve all done before so we’re sharing our experiences and our knowledge and training with these departments and we go all over the country doing that.”

Capt. Todd Taylor from Wayne Township said the department often gets “entrapment calls” that are not always considered to be life-threatening.

“The fire department gets a lot of calls about random things. We go to water leaks as well as people who have a ring stuck on their finger,” Taylor said. “We just had a call the other day with a little girl with her finger stuck in a flute.”

“We’ve got to slow ourselves down a little bit versus going into a fire and rushing to put it out. In a machinery extraction, we actually have to worry about the cuts that we make so that we don’t further injure the victim,” he said.

Authorities urged calling 911 to let professionals handle entrapment situations.