Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
It's the 14th year of Haunted Palouse and the 10th for an ancillary benefit – Palouse Fire Department training inside the transforming museum as it takes shape each October.
On Oct. 12, a dozen members of the Palouse Fire Department gathered at the Roy M. Chatters Printing Museum to train inside the unfamiliar wood-framed corridors.
Training Officer Marv Pillers led the exercises, which included covering firefighters' masks with plastic to simulate smoke-impaired vision.
From there, the tasks varied, from finding a downed man to following-the-fire-house-back-out, in what is a search and rescue drill, as well as a confidence course for using self-contained breathing apparatuses.
“Because it's a construction area, it's more like it would be in a building collapse,” Pillers said. “Every year it's built different, so every year there is a new pattern to it.”
To make for a scenario as realistic as possible, firefighters entered the museum just as it was when the Haunted Palouse workers left earlier in the day.
“How they walked out and left it is what we had to deal with,” said Pillers. “As real-life as you can get it.”
Obstacles ranged from ladders, tools, boxes and 18-inch gaps under plywood along the walkways.
With limited visibility – seeing light and dark but no further detail – firefighters made their way through. In the process, they shifted or pulled free their air tanks to be able to squeeze through spaces.
“You've got to make yourself fit through smaller holes than you normally would,” said Pillers. “It's all by feel. Up and down, over and under and through and around.”
The men who participated Oct. 12 spent three hours on the exercises. The Palouse Department has 19 members, not all of which are interior firefighters.
The museum-in-transition training – which began with an idea Pillers had early during the first 10 years of Haunted Palouse building at the museum – has largely replaced one way they used to train. A year before Haunted Palouse began, the Palouse department built a small prop from wood pallets, which they used to simulate obstacles and gaps to fit through.
They now use the museum over the old firehouse – which similarly transforms for Haunted Palouse – because it offers a bigger space.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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