‘Controlled demolition’: Volunteer firefighters get educated on bus rescue in Brownsville
Mike Tony/For the Observer-Reporter
Ben Lawver, a member of Brownsville Fire Company No. 1, learns what to do and how to do it in a bus rescue operation instructional session in Brownsville.
Pennsylvania State Fire Academy instructor Mike Booker (wearing the red helmet) instructs local volunteer firefighters how to perform a bus rescue in Brownsville.
Mike Tony/For the Observer-Reporter
Local volunteer firefighters conduct a simulated bus rescue operation in Brownsville. Mlaker Transportation provided the bus, turned on its side, to allow firefighters to gain experience in performing a bus rescue.
No school. Few vehicles. No problem.
Downtown Brownsville was peacefully quiet around 9 a.m. on a recent Sunday.
But volunteer firefighters from throughout Greene and Fayette counties had gotten up early and gathered there an hour earlier to imagine an altogether different scene.
What was in front of them left little to the imagination: a 66-passenger school bus flipped on its side near the bus garage off Brownsville Avenue, empty and donated by Mlaker Transportation to allow them to learn how to conduct a bus rescue operation.
It was only a simulation. But the labor, performed in several hours of pouring rain, was real.
“You read the wreck,” explained Mike Booker, a state fire academy instructor and one of two instructors on hand Dec. 1. “Take what the bus is giving you.”
The bus gave about 21 volunteer firefighters a hands-on opportunity to learn how to identify the resources needed depending on the severity of the incident, stabilize the vehicle from further movement, and extricate passengers by using hydraulic tools and a hand saw method if the hydraulic tools should fail.
“It’s controlled demolition,” Booker said.
“They peel off the roof like a tin can,” explained Richard C. Black, assistant fire chief of Brownsville Fire Company No. 1. Seven members of the company underwent the bus rescue education.
“It’s great education to have,” Black said. “Hopefully, we never have to put it to use.”
In addition to the overturned bus, another upright bus was available for firefighters to practice cutting into and stabilizing, giving the firefighters another 16 tons to work with throughout several hours of pouring rain.
“These buses, (it’s) phenomenal, the damage they can absorb,” said Jack Lawver, president of Brownsville company No. 1 and manager of Mlaker’s Brownsville office.
Lawver recalled a 2017 crash in Grindstone in which a car crashed into a bus at an estimated 45 miles per hour and sustained heavy damage but made little impact on the bus at all.
Still, bus rescue could instantly become top priority at any time, prompting several bus rescue training sessions over the years made by possible by decommissioned buses from Davidsville, Somerset County-based Mlaker and Brownsville Bus Lines, which handed over its reins to Mlaker in 2016.
“We have a great working relationship with Mlaker,” Black said. “They make every attempt to support us in any way they can … year-round. As they continue to maintain their fleet, the older buses become decommissioned, and they offer them to us to have the ability to host classes like this and learn firsthand on to operate on a scene. There is a vast difference in the construction of a normal passenger vehicle versus a bus.”
Westmoreland County Community College provided the instructors, who helped guide responders through a 16-hour course that started the previous weekend and included a lecture about the anatomy of different types of buses. Some of the fire personnel present had already been educated on bus rescue operations and used the session as a refresher.
Lawver and Booker remembered a 1985 accident in which a Brownsville Bus Lines bus hydroplaned off Route 40 into Lafayette Memorial Park, which they said forced responders to figure out how to conduct the rescue operation on the fly.
So Booker later took an extrication class at the University of Georgia and became a state fire academy instructor, helping make sure area firefighters are prepared should disaster strike a bus in transit.
If that happens, the members of Brownsville No. 1, South Brownsville Volunteer Fire Department, Everson VFD, Allison No. 2 VFD, Markleysburg VFD, Tower Hill No. 2 VFD, Fairchance VFD, Bobtown VFD and Jefferson Hills Fire/Rescue who showed up to learn on a rain-soaked Sunday morning will know what to do.
“There’s a reason for everything they’re doing,” Booker said.