Shuffling and sliding on hands and knees, the four Chattanooga fire cadets inch blindly along the inside wall of a home.
Then they hit some stairs.
“What are you supposed to do?” yells Capt. Anthony Williams.
Amid the muffled shouts from behind breathing masks covered with wax paper, the cadet doesn’t respond at first but continues crawling up the short staircase, reaching a hand in front of his body.
“Where’s your tool?” the captain yells.
“I wasn’t given one,” Cadet Kim Honish Jr. replies.
A few shouts from Williams and a teammate behind Honish hands up a pry bar. Honish bangs the tool on the stairs, making sure they won’t collapse when he leads his team up.
Luckily, the day of training at the donated home in the 6100 block of Hixson Pike was just that, training. The 2010 Fire Academy class of 24 cadets had the benefit of immediate correction from instructors watching from a few feet away. And no fire breathing down their necks, yet.
Although the academy began in August and usually lasts six months, seven of the 24 cadets already possess the medical training needed and will be full-time by December, fire officials said. The rest of the cadets are scheduled to graduate Feb. 24.
On Wednesday, the crew crawling up the stairs found the “body” — a mannequin contorted into a painful-looking condition, legs splayed upward, one arm stuck underneath the torso, the other arm missing from the elbow down.
As the cadets dragged the mannequin along, searching for the entrance, trainers tossed old furniture, wooden pallets and debris in their way just to make it harder.
The crews overshot their exit and, bunched in a corner room with another four-man team, their breather alarms sounded simultaneously, a steady ring like an old school bell times eight, warning them that their oxygen was running low.
Lt. David McBurnett, one of the academy training instructors, said the exercise tries to simulate a search for victims when firefighters first arrive on the scene.
Crews conduct different tasks at a fire. Some use the hose to begin dousing the fire while commanders rotate others through the blaze.
If the fire hasn’t engulfed the home and firefighters are told victims remain in the structure, they head inside and search, McBurnett said. “I’m wanting them to make sure they work together as a team and communicate with each other so that nobody in the team gets lost,” he said.
Honish, 24, said the drill was harder the second time through Wednesday and difficult to describe.
“Try to imagine, if you can, going into a building you don’t know and it’s pitch dark, you can’t see a thing,” he said. “You’ve got people yelling at you, trying to tell you what to do.”