An elite team of San Diego firefighters, with special skills are competing in a high-stakes rescue operation, at the international level.<\/p>\n
News 8 had an opportunity to see them practice Saturday, before they head to Spain.<\/p>\n
Six people, five men, one woman, are part of the San Diego Fire Department’s Technical Rescue Team. They will be putting their skills to the test in Spain two weeks from now.<\/p>\n
“It’s based on speed, also patient care,” Firefighter and paramedic, Donald Chen said.<\/p>\n
They are one of four North American teams competing against 28 others from around the world, for bragging rights. The international rope rescue competition “Rescue Great Day” tests their technical skills, in challenging high-angle scenarios.<\/p>\n
“This has always been on my bucket list to try,” Chen added.<\/p>\n
They won’t know the situation or terrain, until the competition begins so they have to be prepared for anything.<\/p>\n
“We have to bring 4,100-meter ropes, which is about 300 feet. We get to do rescues off of stadiums and industrial areas,” he said.<\/p>\n
Core strength and knot tying are keys to their success. As if it was a real-life rescue or recovery operation, the team hoists themselves up and over the ledge, puts the patient on a stretcher, and ultimately back down to safety.<\/p>\n
“In rescue, we don’t get to say where the victim is, they are where they lie and we have to work around that,” he explained.<\/p>\n
The firefighters bring all their own gear and pay their own way, with the help of a few sponsors. It’s all to be better prepared for saving lives back here in San Diego.<\/p>\n
“It’s supposed to be educational, where you learn from other teams. Each one of these firefighters I would feel comfortable handling an operation that is outside of our normal call for the fire department,” Chen said.<\/p>\n
The competition will be on April 30 and May 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An elite team of San Diego firefighters, with special skills are competing in a high-stakes rescue operation, at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[119020,4853,104191,74,76,75,119021,119022],"class_list":["post-275017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-donald-chen","tag-firefighters","tag-rescue-operation","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-special-skills","tag-technical-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}