June 18, 2009

Two firefighters were sent sailing through the air 100 feet above the Martha Jefferson construction site Thursday afternoon in one of the most difficult rescues for firefighters to perform.

Dozens of firefighters and members of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad practiced a rescue of an unconscious person from a high-rise building. For the training exercise, Charlottesville and Albemarle firefighters are using a mannequin.

For this drill, skies are clear. There's no smoke and flames, but Charlottesville fire officials say these highly supervised training drills prepare firefighters for the real deal.

"As the city and the community continues to change, and we deal with more and more construction of high rise structures, the chance for us to come out today and use not only an 150 ton crane but to practice being suspended off the end of the crane line is just great training," says Robert Bragg, the Operational Battalion Chief of Charlottesville. "It's something we don't get to do much."

Bragg describes the sensation of being on one of these cranes as the same feeling as hanging off the end of a rope.

These training drills pay off though. Charlottesville fire officials say they've had to make about four high-rise rescues in the past eighteen months.