By Melanie Breault ‘11
ITHACA, NY— The newly renovated lodge at Cornell University’s Alpha Psi fraternity took the lives of three volunteer firefighters when the building engulfed in flames Dec. 6, 1906. After a wall collapsed on top of them, firefighters Albert F. Rusack, Jr., Estes J. Landon and Alfred S. Robinson were pronounced dead the morning of Dec. 7.
“An event like that could have been avoided,” State Fire Instructor for the city of Ithaca Fire Department Tom Basher said.
Basher has been an instructor and firefighter with the Ithaca Fire Department for 17 years. For the past 15 years, he has been the head instructor for the Tompkins County Fire Training Division’s firefighter survival program, a daylong course that teaches self-rescue and rescue of trapped firefighters.
“People were getting killed,” he said. “Had [those firefighters] had some knowledge or training in certain fields, they may not have had that same outcome.”
The Tompkins County course is based on FDNY Battalion Chief John Salka’s “Training Your Firefighters to Get Out Alive” program. Salka created the program in 1995 after 11 New York City firefighters died in the line of duty in 22 months.
“Nine out of 11 of those firefighters were killed in a building they could have easily gotten out of had they had the proper training,” Salka said.
Salka is also the founder and president of Fire Command Training, an organization that provides lectures, workshops and hands-on training to fire service professionals around the country. Salka was awarded the Fire Engineering’s Training Achievement Award in March 2001 at the Fire Department Instructors Conference in Indianapolis for his firefighter survival program.
“I didn’t come up with this all on my own,” he said. “I took the skills I learned from other firefighters as well as my own situations and created a package. This [package] has become the model for so many different fire departments now.”
In order to become a firefighter in Ithaca, the fire department has made the concepts of Salka’s program mandatory. As the first step toward their career, Basher said potential firefighters must go to the New York State Academy for Fire Science in Montour Falls. Once they have completed the academy, they must attend specific firefighter training in Ithaca, which includes 90 hours of basic training as well as constant training throughout their careers.
“There are certain dangerous working conditions that are always constant [for firefighters],” Salka said. “I don’t know if these conditions will ever change, but through [the firefighter survival] training, we can diminish the number of fatalities and injuries per year.”
According to the National Fire Protection Association, 70 on-duty firefighters died in 2009 with 4.28 percent of those deaths caused by being caught or trapped at the scene. New York state made up the largest number of on-duty firefighter fatalities at 7.14 percent.
“In actuality, not that many firefighters die from being trapped in a burning building,” Salka said. “But it still keeps happening and we are taking steps to diminish these numbers. There shouldn’t be even one.”
The first session of training for the season will be held from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Nov. 14 at the Tompkins County Fire Training Center on 200 Pier Road. Basher said he will show his trainees how to propel themselves out a third floor window using rope, how to slide down a ladder head first, and other life-saving techniques.
“I waited five or six years to get this kind information,” he said. “It was like an epiphany. With some rope in my pocket, I or one of my colleagues won’t have to die. We have options now.”
