Groundbreaking on a cooperative training facility in McComb could be less than a month away.
City Fire Chief Gary McKenzie told McComb Lions Club members Tuesday that the facility, a joint project of fire departments across the county, could go into construction in just weeks.
“The county departments have all met their financial obligations,” McKenzie said. “I would love to see it expand into a regional facility. We could work with the community college.”
The planned facility, which will be built next to Fire Station No. 4 on Parklane Road, will include a rappelling tower, confined-space training building and other training sites.
McKenzie said some members of the fire department spent the week of Feb. 12 training at Camp Shelby with National Guard units on joint response.
Those exercises, called Patriot South, emphasized “blending resources” of civilian and military organizations.
“The military has lots of equipment, lots of transportation,” McKenzie said. “What they don’t have is lots of rescue personnel ... What we did there was use military transportation to move civilian rescuers and resources.”
The exercises were based on a scenario that posited an “event” in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, which includes parts of eight states, including northern Mississippi.
“I don’t know how good that technology is for earthquake prediction these days, but we’re doing a lot of training for that type of response,” McKenzie said.
He said participants in that training will head north to Wisconsin next year for exercises called Patriot North.
The McComb Fire Department is also the lead agency for hazardous materials response in 11 Southwest Mississippi counties.
“Monticello would look to us if they had a hazardous materials situation,” McKenzie said. “If something happens here, we don’t have to wait for somebody else to come in.”
Closer to home, McKenzie said he is proud that the department now responds to calls for medical assistance.
“My shift commanders decide if the fire department can be an asset” on a medical call, McKenzie said.
Since the first of the year, “we’ve gone out about 125 times, and two lives have been saved by (fire personnel performing) CPR. We don’t always know the outcome, but we’ve got two confirmed saves, and makes it worth it.”
McKenzie said the fire department only responds to support ambulance crews, but because calls for ambulances go into local dispatch, then to Hattiesburg to the AAA ambulance dispatching system and back to the local ambulance service, fire department personnel can arrive more quickly and begin live-saving techniques such as CPR or defibrillation.
To aid personnel in responding to medical calls, McKenzie said the department is looking for ways to fund the purchase of automated external defibrillators, devices meant to shock the heart back into rhythm.
“They’re $900 to $1,700 apiece,” McKenzie said. With what the department already has, “about $5,000 would put one on every fire truck.”
For other calls that require multiple agencies to respond, the protocols of the National Incident Management System are used.
“Everybody knows where they fit in the system and knows how to work,” McKenzie said. “It’s an effective system.”
He said a multi-agency training exercise geared toward response to a school shooting was taking place during the noon hour as the club met, without a lot of public notice.
“A lot of the time, things like this are done with nobody knowing,” McKenzie said. “If fire drills are expected, they’re not effective.”
