Rescue practice

AUBURN - It may have been a training exercise, but for members of the Auburn Fire Department, the threat of a secondary collapse was real as they attempted to rescue a victim who was trapped in a trench more than eight-feet deep.

“The only way it gets more realistic than this is if we really had a real person trapped down there,” said Dan Schneider, an instructor from the state Office of Fire Prevention and Control, who was helping to teach the local firefighters how to safely execute trench rescues.

The firefighters learned how to safely account for factors such as weather, confined space and the possibility of a secondary collapse, which could trap rescue workers who were attempting to get to the victim.