Coweta Fire destroyed a car on purpose—the reason might save your life

Coweta Fire Department joined forces with Oklahoma State University’s Fire Service Training program for a hands-on vehicle extrication session. Firefighter Brian Woodward walked us through what these joint trainings look like and why they matter.

Q: What brought Coweta Fire and OSU students together for this training?

A: “Jonathan Short with Oklahoma State University Fire Service Training—they are teaching an advanced EMT class. Currently, we have six firemen that are in this class. I believe there are 20 or 30 students in this class.

They reached out to us and asked if we would host a vehicle extrication, not a class, but just a visual representation of how firefighters think and how we work. Everyone here is in the class. They're going to be, hopefully, advanced EMTs in the near future.”

Q: Why is it important for EMT students to see how fire crews operate?

A: “We got to work together, right? So this is where we coincide some of the skills—learn to communicate, learn to talk.

Some of these people are not fire department. They're strictly ambulance. They don't know what we're doing.

So we slow-talked everything—why we chalk wheels, why we pull and peek for airbags, why we disconnect batteries. That's all knowledge for them.

If they beat us to the scene—or any fire service—they won't just open a door and set an airbag off.

If it improves their skill set one percent, then we did our job.”

Q: How often do you train for vehicle extrications?

A: “We train on it usually about every other month on motor vehicle collisions. It is our number one response in Coweta.

It makes us all refresh our skills, and it teaches them.

We try to train on motor vehicle collisions every other month or so, whether we're cutting up cars or not. This is the fourth car we've cut up in three months. But then again, we might not cut up a car for another year.”

Q: How different was this work when you started in the fire service?

A: “Twenty, almost 24 years ago, we were cutting people out with hand tools, using a hacksaw. I mean, there were tools then, but they wasn't really efficient.

We still can use hand tools, but we would much rather use these real, expensive tools that are designed for this.

Q: What makes a car crash one of the most difficult calls to respond to?

A: “Patient care. You could have one ambulance and three or four patients. Then you’ve got to decide: who needs help the most right now? Sometimes it’s all of them.

It’s a sad decision, but someone has to make it.

Another challenge is: do we even have the resources coming? Can we get two more ambulances out here? Are our other trucks tied up on calls?

Sometimes we’re doing rescues with just the tools in an ambulance. That’s reality, especially during peak call volume.”

Q: What benefit does this training offer the EMT students specifically?

A: “Before they get thrown to the wolves and have that first bad accident… this gives them an ability where they can ask questions.

It’s little stuff like that that we teach here. So that way, we don’t learn it by getting injured, and we lessen our chances of getting injured.

Sometimes, when everything goes right, we can still not succeed. But as long as we take the precautions that we should and can, it statistically reduces our chances of being injured.”

Q: What do you want the public to understand about this kind of training?

A: “I hope that the community sees that the fire department, not just us, I mean, they actively train every day.

It’s because I want my guys to go home. I want them to enjoy their life and see their kids.

I don’t want them to get injured out here. So, training is how we do it.

I hope that sticks with them—because no one taught me that, and I learned it the hard way.”