Confined Space Rescue @ U.S.S. North Carolina

American Emergency Response Training (ERT) is a company that provides training to a wide variety of emergency teams around the world. In early November 2006, they hosted a confined space rescue class aboard the U.S.S. North Carolina, the battleship memorial in Wilmington NC. American ERT staff Mike McCreary, Arnold Pena, Mike Davis, John McCreary and Dennis Michaluk led 11 students through an intense week-long class which was a combination of technical rescue training and history lesson. Class participants came from Tennessee, Texas and North Carolina, and they represented a variety of emergency responders including industrial brigades, fire departments, rescue squads and ambulance companies.

Monday and Tuesday were spent in the classroom, reviewing basic skills like knot-tying, anchors, mechanical advantage systems and air monitoring. On Wednesday we did several scenarios in American ERT's confined space simulator, pictured at left, a tractor-trailer rig with a maze of tubes, baffles, and obstacles which ERT instructors built themselves. Thursday and Friday were spent on the battleship. We were given access to areas that are not normally open to the public in which to do our scenarios, and these challenged students with all kinds of difficult and realistic problems to solve.

This class will be featured in an upcoming video by Working Fire Training. Videographer Ralph Keune (pictured at right) joined us Wednesday and Thursday and filmed many hours of footage in the classroom, confined space simulator, and the battleship. He will spend the next several weeks editing the clips (perhaps having to add in a few "bleeps" here and there, heh) and putting them together into a comprehensive program on confined space training.

I'm not the best at remembering things, especially names - If I have mis-stated anyone's information or anything else in these photo pages, please email me so that I can correct it.