In the middle of February, ten members of the Islesford Volunteer Fire Department left their island homes and families to dedicate more than 40 hours to complete intense training activities at the Mississippi State Fire Academy (MSFA) in Jackson. Islesford Fire Chief Courtney Chaplin spent months working out the logistics of the training and travel plans for the trip to Mississippi. With cooperation between the Maine Fire Training and Education organization (MFT&E) and the MFSA, a curriculum was planned for the Islesford firemen that would provide them with the 72 hours of training required to receive their Volunteer Firefighter certificates from the state of Maine. Before they even left the state, the group of dedicated volunteers had given up two of their winter weekends to attend 32 hours of classroom training at the Islesford Neighborhood House led by Chris Farley and Walter Morris of the MFT&E. With classroom time completed, they would be able to maximize their visit to Mississippi by experiencing hands-on training at one of the largest fire academies in the country.
One might wonder why these men did not choose to get their training a little closer to home. For one thing, Maine does not have a state fire academy, but there were other considerations in designating the timing and the location. February is a slow time for most work on Islesford, so the men could take the time to train together. The thought of attempting to organize ten people for 72 hours of training on the island during the hectic summer or the fall fishing season is mind boggling. The warm southern weather was a factor because it’s just not practical to practice fire fighting with hoses and water in the freezing temperatures of New England. The MSFA offered a large campus, dormitory, dining hall, and numerous facilities for live training with a wide variety of fires.
Courtney Chaplin, Steve Philbrook, David Thomas, Rick Alley, Malcolm Fernald, Jeremy Alley, Richard Howland, Sam Hyler, Bruce Fernald and Will Palmer left Islesford at the beginning of the school vacation week, for a trip that was anything but a vacation. They took Sam Hyler’s lobster boat to Northeast Harbor at 4 on a Saturday afternoon so they could fly out of Bangor at 6 a.m. the next day. Along with their luggage, each of the men carried an orange bag with their turnout gear: the pants, coats, boots, masks and gloves of a firefighter. In addition, Rick had a double batch of gingerbread baked by his mom, Lil, and Bruce had a Garmin GPS to help them find their way to restaurants at night in Jackson.
Upon arrival at the academy, they met with their head instructor and toured the 80-acre campus in the warmth of a 70 degree afternoon, commenting that the island they were from was only 5 times larger than the campus itself. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, they dealt with car fires, pipeline fires, fuel tank fires, and fires caused by broken valves. They learned about power cones, full streams, fog and foam — the water patterns used for attacking different kinds of fire. They practiced house searches while wearing blacked out masks. They crawled through burning buildings in groups of two or three putting out fires, finding victims and practicing search patterns, while wearing turnout gear and air packs weighing almost 40 pounds. During the two weekends before the trip, the fire fighters had successfully practiced and met the two-minute time test for getting into to all of their gear. On Thursday they trained on a vacuum tanker truck like the new one being built for the Islesford department, learning even more about the proper maintenance and hookup of hoses. The new truck, expected to arrive on the island in the fall, will hold 2,500 gallons of water and will be able to fill up from a water source in less than 3 minutes.
As the men headed back to the airport in Jackson on Friday, a snowstorm was slamming the east coast. They arrived in Atlanta amid a chaos of canceled flights at the end of school vacation. On Saturday morning they managed to get to Philadelphia by flying standby on various planes. After learning there were no more available flights for them until Monday, they rented three cars and made the 10-hour drive to Bangor to retrieve their own vehicles and make lost luggage claims. At 2 a.m. on Sunday, the tired but determined firefighters were back home on Islesford. “It took only 4 hours to get down there and 32 hours to get back,” said Bruce Fernald.
Eleven people on Islesford are now certified by the state of Maine as Volunteer Firefighters. This is a big step in the process required to have our fire department achieve a “Class 9” status, which will lower homeowners’ insurance rates in the future. “Basically, when it comes down to fighting a fire, the ISO rating doesn’t matter,” said Courtney Chaplin. “To see everyone working as a team, moving hoses together, and gaining confidence; that was what we got out of the training in Mississippi.”
Our community on Little Cranberry Island owes a huge debt of gratitude to Courtney and the rest of the crew who sacrificed so much of their time to become better trained in protecting our town. In the case of David Thomas, even more than time was sacrificed. He shaved his beard for the first time in 30 years to be able to wear the necessary SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) for training. Funding for the Mississippi training session was the result of a bequest from Phyllis Colson. In the next year, the I.V.F.D. will be making a big push to find grants and donations to help purchase SCBAs for our fire department. At $5,500 a piece, they are not cheap, but the life they could save is priceless.
The head instructor at the Mississippi State Fire Academy commented that he had never seen ten guys who worked so well together. He was impressed by how well they listened and followed instructions. He said, “I don’t know what goes on, on that island, but whatever it is, its good.” I’m sure a dedicated group from any of Maine’s island communities could elicit a similar remark. Courtney encourages island fire departments who are interested in learning more about Islesford’s training to contact him by e-mail: cwchaplin@gmail.com.