 The training division, Texas A&M, you see it right there. We'll just leave it up for a second. And, Billy, you say you did about 65 courses. Are they available just to Texas before the criteria for getting in a course? The area schools that we conduct, mainly on the weekends, are pretty much open enrollment to anybody. We don't have any limitations whatsoever of any kind on any of our classes, unless they book full, then we have problems like that. Sam, let me raise a point as we're moving into the on-rope rescue. Again, almost like swimming, people think, well, I've gone out, I bought myself a nice little hat doll. Boy, I'm a rock climber. And I've seen situations where you'll come on the scene to do a rescue. And two or three guys think that they know how to do rescue, and they've flung ropes over the side, and they're swinging around on it. And pretty soon you've got three or four people out there you have to rescue. Just being a recreational rock climber does not make you a rope rescue professional, does it? That's right, Rich. Actually, a recreational or recreational rock climbing is a whole different discipline from rope rescue. The techniques and the equipment are, for the most part, completely different. And individuals who are not experienced in rescue techniques should not be attempting to rescue other climbers. So I think you see that. I mean, the natural response, if there's climbers around, is to go do something. Certainly, we see that in all aspects of rescue, trench rescue, building collapse, swift water. We always arrive on the scene with someone attempting to do something. That's a natural state of things. Okay, let's take another call. Another Texas call. You know, Billy, I think you've got yourself an audience out here. Clarksville, Texas, Robert Long. Go ahead, sir, you're on the air. My question is, I'm an agriculture rescue. I'm with a small fire department. I'm the training officer here. Our equipment is just the jaws of life, the ram, and the cutters. On that type of equipment, could we rescue people under agriculture without having to call in extra equipment? Sometimes the equipment just you can. What I just really suggest to you is getting with your implement dealers and have him go through some of the different types of equipment because some of the equipment that you have is not gonna be able to cut through some of the hardened case metals. In that case, probably some of the best tools you'll ever use out there is probably just basic hand tools, wrenches, ratchets, so forth like that, which you're easily obtained. Also, if you're on a farm, I mean, to my experience, the man whose farm it is has some tools. It's a good idea to maybe check around and see if you can use some of the things that are at hand right there. Sure. Have your equipment resources well planned out. Use whatever is available. A lot of times the people there on the farm have their own equipment there. Once again, getting back to this farm implement dealer, putting him on call, having him respond because they do it on a regular basis, go out and make service calls on the equipment. Mr. Long, what else can we help you with? How large is your squad, sir? We have 30 volunteers and six paid men. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Have you had occasion to run some calls like this, sir? At this time, we haven't had any problem with that. We've had some problem with the tractors catching on fire. No, let me ask really a question about that because, again, you may be towing pesticides. Sure. You may be towing in silage. You may be towing anything that has the potential for a rapidly spreading fire. You also may be in a field where you can start a heck of a brush fire and be entrapped in the process of that, too. So there are larger hazards here that we're talking about, aren't there? Absolutely. You always have to be aware that most of the time when harvest time is, most of the stuff is dry and the potential for fire hazard is very great. So having adequate fire protection there is very, very important. Okay, we had a call from a caller and I'm gonna dip deep down and if any of y'all wanna help me out on this, you're a paramedic. A caller asked about crush syndrome. As I understand, there's two aspects to it, one of which is that over a period of time after you've crushed tissues, they release certain toxins and at a certain point, releasing the patient releases those and you become immediately and very seriously septic. The other is blood pressure changes as you auto infuse yourself or auto transfuse yourself and once you release it again, you have a massive dilation of your vascular system and you crash out, your blood pressure crashes. Those are the two things I can think of and help me out with this. You're better at this than I am. Well, I haven't had much experience with dealing with the crush syndrome. Some of the things to consider though, when an extremity or the full body is crushed to one of the things we've got anaerobic metabolism going on. With the buildup of lactic acid in the body and once we release that to whatever it is, that large object on there, then we have an infusion of lactic acid back into the system that could create some dysrhythmias. Metabolic shock, actually about what it is. The other is the compartment syndrome where you have a collapse of your blood pressure. That could be in just one extremity or whatever, but we do have that when the vessels break open, you leak out into the system, the pressure drops and we've got a serious problem to deal with there. Yeah, the bottom line caller and again, thank you for the question, is that you're dealing in essence with a very serious advanced life support situation in most of these cases. So you probably are gonna wanna plan to have ALS if you don't have it in your community to get the helicopter started, get life flight or whatever it is on the way. By the time you get the patient out, you're gonna need advanced life support even though it may seem to be a minor situation from the start. That's probably a good rule of thumb. What do you think, Tim? Absolutely, we would like to have ALS on the scene immediately, cardiac monitoring and infusion, taking a look at any changes in the monitor that we might have. An IV started before we remove, if possible. If it's in the best interest of the patient to move rapid transport, we would like to have all that in position before we move those objects off of our victims. Yeah, good point. So consider ALS as part of your planning immediately. Also, I think in agriculture incidents for the same kind of reasons. And in rock incidents where you have, say an injury where the rope has been wrapped around a limb for a period of time, you've got all kinds of complications there. Wouldn't you think too, Sam? Sure, and crush injuries are also potential because of falling rocks in earth and so forth. So there's serious medical components to all of these. Keith Henke, or Keith Henke, excuse me, and Frederick Merlin, go ahead, Keith, your turn. Yeah, thank you, Rick. Sure. I'm glad to be on the show. Glad to see all you together here. I have a question for you as well as Captain Turner in regards to rope rescue. It's a three-part question in that, could you elaborate more on what an incident commander should do before the specialty team arrives on the scene? And then once the specialty team, in this case, a rope rescue team arrives on the scene, what the incident commander should do as far as integrating them into the rescue situation. And then if you can elaborate any further on, like helicopter operations in a rope rescue incident. Sam, go ahead. Well, the first thing you need to consider is control of the scene. You've got to look at what your problems are. You're bound to have problems unless you're in a very isolated area with bystanders. You want to make certain that those bystanders are away from the scene. Normally, or often, you're going to be dealing with a situation where you've got a lot of people looking over the edge of a cliff or hillside down at a victim, and so you have the potential for added debris and injury to the victim. Once you've controlled the scene and have a good handle on what the problem is, when the rescue team arrives, you want to apprise them of what you have and then pretty much turn it over to them and get them to put you to work doing things that you can do with the expertise that you have. In essence, then, with the on-scene commander, once the rescue team goes to work, they actually be more important, providing additional resources as opposed to telling, okay, do this, do that, or whatever. Exactly. Yeah, but that's it. I guess, Keith, and are you involved in a team right now, Keith? Ah, yes, we're from the county. Tell us how you run it. We just formulated an advanced technical rescue team with Harper's Ferry being so near, Sugarloaf Mountain in this area. We've had some overland rescues and we're just starting to get started, basically, and we're just trying to expand our role within Frederick County and so on. And what we're really interested in is helicopter operations to evac the patient out of basically a wilderness type of rescue. Let me call on Sam again for a minute. Can you elaborate a little more on the role of the helicopter in incidents like this? Well, in terms of helicopter operation, normally the helicopter crew is trained and has the equipment necessary to do their part of the operation. So really the key here is to direct them in and then provide communication so that they understand what the extent of your problem is, where your victim is, and what has been accomplished to this point. Keith, are you still with us? Yes, sir. Let me ask you one other question because you have an interesting combination in Frederick County, which is just a little south of the Emmitsburg campus. That is, you've got a large river, the Monocacy River. How do you coordinate your river rescue and your high angle rescue? Is that a single team or how do you handle that? Well, at this time, we don't perform any swift water rescue yet we're still seeking some training and using the ropes and possibly doing like a high line or in some instances where it dictates. But basically right now there's companies that basically have boats and they just do their water rescues with boats and so on, but we haven't really integrated with them yet. But the county is divided up so there are people who do one and people who do the other. Absolutely. Good point. Also, I understand you also use in some cases the resources of Montgomery County to the south and your neighbors to the North Adams and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. So it's a nice working relationship, isn't it? Absolutely. We've been very fortunate with the mutual aid packs in this area to call upon Montgomery County's said team and like you said, Shippensburg has a team in Pennsylvania and Baltimore County also has one in this area. Okay, Keith, thank you very much for calling in. We appreciate that. Listen, real quick guys, we're gonna have to get out of here but let me just go down the line real quick. What is the one key thing if you were to leave somebody with one idea about serious technical rescue from your standpoint? What would it be? Sam, let's start with you. It would definitely be get training from qualified instructors, understand the capabilities of the equipment that you have and practice, practice, practice. Billy? Know your limitations. Know how to protect yourself, know how to take care of yourself so that you don't become a victim. And Tim? I'd say the same thing that a matter of fact, all of our presenters have said today, training, we need to get competent instructors to train us for what we're going out to do, understand the hazards, the type of operations we're getting ourselves into and then just be real smart heads up about going out and doing these rescues. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you. Appreciate the panel. We appreciate all your calls. Time's up though, we've got to move on here. We've got some information that the emergency response teams, firefighters and police officers may be interested in. There is a video now available showing how to respond to accidents involving horse trailers and horses, something we don't consider but we may have to deal with. It's called equine trailer rescue. It's produced by video knowledge incorporated of New Jersey. It teaches basic horse handling skills as well as specific restraining methods and extrication techniques. The tape approved by the American Association of Equine Practitioners is available for $59 from video knowledge. The address is 25 Applegate Street in Red Bank, New Jersey and the zip code is 077-01 or by calling 908-842-5837. That's for your equine rescue tape. Now your recommendations for us, little horse sense for us for improving these shows are totally invaluable and we want to hear from you about that. Here's the person to write to. Sue Downen, she's the executive producer of Enet. You can write to her at the National Emergency Training Center 168-25 South Seaton Avenue in Emmitsburg, Maryland and the zip code is 217-27. Now, if you would like to buy any of the Enet broadcasts from 1989 to the present, you can do so by calling or contacting the National Audiovisual Center and there's the address. It's pretty complicated up on the screen. It's in Capitol Heights, Maryland just outside of Washington DC. Two telephone numbers for you to call 1-800-788-6282 or their regular number if you can't get the 800 number is 1-301-763-1896. Now copies of broadcasts for our shows can be obtained on loan also from your state emergency management or FEMA regional offices and to get those tapes or to buy tapes before 1989, call the Enet office. Now, if you have any questions about Enet for 1993 the rest of this year, please feel free to call the Enet office up in Emmitsburg. That number is 1-800-527-4893 or 301-447-1068. Now, finally, for those of you involved in the ongoing flood emergency in the Midwest, here's a new source of official information. FEMA has established DC-1, it's called the Disaster Channel One. It's currently providing national level news feeds for Midwest flooding, including the latest federal reports of disaster assistance being made available. DC-1 is broadcast from FEMA headquarters and here's the satellite setup. C-band Galaxy 7 transponder 23 and on the KU band SBS 6 transponder six. The news feeds and update segments will be transmitted daily from one to 4 p.m. eastern daylight time for the duration of the flooding and just briefly right now there are seven states with declared disasters. Over 25 disaster application centers in place. Here is a telephone number for you. 1-800-469-9029. 1-800-469-9029 to register as a disaster victim if you're affected. 1-800-462-7585 for the hearing impaired. If you have information or if you need donations or want to give donations actually, mainly money, people there need money. They don't need left shoes or single gloves or things like that, they need money. And that number to get information about where to donate is 1-800-634-7089. There's over 800 FEMA employees out there in the Midwest now working plus personnel from 26 other federal agencies plus the American Red Cross. The folks out there need all the help they can get and they certainly have our prayers and support. This was our 100th show. We thank you for your support. With your support, we'll do 100 more. Thanks for watching. Stay safe. I'm Rich Adams.