The Trenton Fire Department is training for a situation they hope they'll never have to use. Watch video
TRENTON -- It's not natural for a person to exit a building through a window, much less headfirst.
Now add blinding smoke and searing flames to the room.
That's the situation Trenton firefighters were training for yesterday, and hoping they never have to use.
The training, which is relatively new, employs a device called a Personal Safety & Escape System - a clamp with a 50-foot section of rope. In an extreme emergency, a firefighter can hook it anything solid, like a pipe or the window sill, and repel down the wall of a structure.
In shorter terms, the firefighters call it "bailing out."
One by one, the firefighters took turns bailing from a window constructed inside the station.
The hardest part for firefighters, Battalion Chief Gus Tackacs said, is initially exiting the window in a horizontal, sideways manner. And firefighters are urged to "fall" so the rope does not get tangled.
"It's not human nature to fall out of a window," said Tackacs, who led the training.
Also, firefighters then carefully "walk" down the side.
The firefighters do nine jumps initially - the last three with full gear and their face mask covered to simulate a disorienting, smoke-filled room, fire Capt. Anthony Moran said.
Every year, they'll do more brush-up jumps.
The tactic was born from tragedy: a deadly 2005 fire in New York City that killed two firefighters and severely injured four others. The men, trapped between a wall of flames and windows, had seconds to make a decision: likely die in the flames, or jump from the window.
They jumped; two died at the scene, one died years later from the injuries. They had no such ropes.
The day is known as Black Sunday, since another FDNY firefighter died in a separate fire that day, and it reverberates through the fire service to this day.
As Trenton firemen practiced the maneuver inside fire headquarters, talk of the Black Sunday deaths filtered through the conversations.
Tackacs said at any fire, some men and women work above the flames, wether on the roof or searching for victims on upper floors. "And when things go wrong, they go wrong fast."
Ideally, a trapped firefighter will make a "mayday" call, get in position and anchor the rope, then pause to see if his colleagues can rescue him, or put out the flames in the room, Tackacs said.
"The last thing any fire chief wants to see if a firefighter coming down the side on a 7-millimeter rope," Tackacs said. "But now we have that option and it's a safe option."
Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.