South Kitsap Fire Rescue (SKFR) responders took advantage of the summer weather to practice their deployment to water rescue events on Long Lake earlier this week.

According to Battalion Chief Ron Powers, on-duty crews rotated through the training exercise facilitated by Ed Seibold, an SKFR firefighter.

“Seibold became a certified Rapid Entry Rescue swimmer last year and enjoys sharing his knowledge and skills with others in the department,” Powers said.

Powers said crews practiced donning the ice rescue suites, which are a multi-purpose all water hazard rescue tool.  In addition, support crews practiced inflating and deploying the RDC (Rapid Deployment Craft), which can serve multiple purposes including rescue operations on the Puget Sound (such as a submerged vehicle), lake response, swift water, or even ice rescue situations.

“Having versatile and modular tools, such as the rescue suits and RDC, allows our crews the ability to gain rapid entry with minimal risk to the responders,” Powers added.

He said training crews would compete against each other for time, which added a level of controlled stress to the training event.

The fastest crews can be fully suited and the boat deployed in the water in about 2 minutes, 20 seconds.