By Scott Hagerman
Messenger-Inquirer
OWENSBORO, Ky. — Few things present a more dangerous situation than downed electrical lines.
Add in the pressures that arise for first responders when there are accident victims to attend to, and it makes for a situation that requires a very high level of training for everyone on site.
Being prepared for such a situation was the goal of a training exercise held Friday morning behind Owensboro Municipal Utilities’ Training and Development Center , which brought together OMU personnel in collaboration with the Owensboro Fire Department , Owensboro Police Department , AMR Ambulance and AirEvac to respond to a mock scene that included energized lines laying across a vehicle with a victim inside, as well as a simulated lineman dummy hanging from the top of a utility pole and in need of rescue.
The event closed OMU’s Safety Week, which included several classes for employees throughout the week.
“We had a deescalation training with the Kentucky State Police , followed by road course training, driver’s training, with our employees,” said Austin McLimore , OMU’s director of transmission and distribution. “Being that I have 19 years in the fire service, as well as 14 years in the utility industry, I thought this was a golden opportunity to allow our crews to work with the first responders that we’re often tasked with responding to incidents with, to just go over the protocols, to be able to see how each other works.
“We get a lot of questions if we have a hurt man rescue as we simulated here. Is it OFD’s responsibility to perform that rescue or is it OMU crews that are gong to do that? We wanted to be able to see our techniques and kind of go through a joint response; what does the response look like? We’re very fortunate to have everybody on board.”
The mock scene started with an OMU lineman cutting electricity to the downed lines, then OFD got the crash victim out of the vehicle. An OMU lineman climbed the utility pole to lower his simulated co-worker to the ground.
“Our crews once a year will do the phone top rescue (practice), part of annual training,” McLimore said. “It’s a process we hope they never have to utilize, but they want to make sure they are the best they can be in case they ever have to.”
McLimore said he wasn’t aware of any issues or concerns that arose during the mock drill, but that there would be a full review with the assembled entities.
“We’ll all go back and evaluate; we’ll get together as leadership teams from the various organizations, and we’re going to go do a debrief and see how we can improve,” McLimore said. “What would OFD be looking for from OMU in an incident like this, or vice versa? What would OMU be looking for from OFD?
“We just really want to get the message out there. We want to be a partner in our community with the training that goes on. A lot of people have a fear of electricity. We understand it. We want to make sure everybody is safe in our community when it comes to electricity.”
McLimore said the situation presented in the mock scene related to questions OMU often receives from first responders, particularly OPD and OFD.
“We really are trying to use this as an opportunity to reach out to those organizations and open that conversation, to say if you have new recruits that have questions on electricity or how to handle certain instances, like a street light pole gets hit on J.R. Miller , is it safe for them to grab it and just move it out of the street, or is there more to it,” he said. “We’re using this as an opportunity to establish those relationships, those communication paths, to be able to provide more training opportunities to the organizations.”
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