MANCHESTER, Conn. — All week, Manchester firefighters have been training in their safety and survival maze to prepare them for a rapid response in an increasingly wired world.
While Station #1 in Manchester appears orderly from the outside, the inside of the garage is a tangled mess or wires and metal, hose lines and safety gear for the training team.
"They’re going through a maze, their vision is obscured they’re wearing blackout masks," Battalion Chief Matt Leroux, who serves Manchester as the training officer at the department, said. "These are situations where there is a ceiling collapse – they are put in a situation where if they don’t get out its going to be themselves that are the victims. We give them the skills and the training so they can extricate themselves out of these situations.”
The survival maze itself is a piece of equipment that the MFD acquired through the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of what is known as the Assistance to Firefighter Grant Program.
"We want to give our members the best opportunity right from the get-go,” Lt. Moria Perez, a 25-year veteran of the Manchester Fire Department, said. "[The safety and survival maze training] is bar none the best for us for keeping us alive. We want to go home safe to our families and we want to protect the people we work with, and we need to have this training in order to do that.”
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Jimmy Altman is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at jaltman@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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