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Big announcement for Estevan A3
Moving forward with porject A7
Issue 41
SERVING THE ENERGY CITY SINCE 1903
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Mailing No. 10769 | Publication No. 40069240
ESTEVAN’S
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Estevan firefighters cut bus to rescue patients By Ana Bykhovskaia abykhovskaia@estevanmercury.ca
Estevan firefighters practised the hands-on approach to rescuing people from a crashed bus last weekend. A written-off school bus was butchered to ensure that members of the Estevan Fire Rescue Service (EFRS) are ready to act if the worst nightmare comes to reality and a major accident involving a school bus occurs in the area. Doug Lapchuk, who is the president of the Saskatchewan Volunteer Fire Fighters Association Inc., came down from Balgonie to navigate Estevan firefighters through a number of scenarios, in which they would need to rescue people from crashed school buses. Estevan Fire Chief Dale Feser noted that this 14-hour long course goes along with their regular training. “We focus on vehicle extrication all the time, but school bus extrication is obviously a specialized skill,” said Feser. “We want to make sure that we are ready to go in the event that we do end up with a call with a lot of casualties or a lot of patients on a school bus.”
Three patients were assessed, checked and safely carried out to the staging area during the exercise. Photo by Anastasiia Bykhovskaia In one of the offered scenarios, a school bus with a driver and two students on board lost control on an icy road, crashed head-on into a bridge abutment and spun off onto the side. Because of the nature of
the impact, the driver who wasn’t wearing his seatbelt was knocked out of the seat and got squished in the front entry. Two patients were thrown down on the impact and wedged between or underneath the
seats. “The idea was to gain access to the unit. They had to find the way to secure the bus, make it so it doesn’t move around. They had to find a safe way to get in. They had to get medical
people in to assess and determine who was the most critical. And then because of the damage to the front, they were unable to use the front as a way out, so they went in the back and they had to cut the side
of the bus to make a flap (to evacuate patients),” explained Lapchuk. The mock rescue took just over an hour, in which firefighters assessed the situation, gained entrance, checked, boarded and securely took patients out to the staging area. Besides the planned add-on challenges, participants also came across some technical difficulties that they had to overcome. “This is a highly contained controlled situation, and we still had things going wrong. So in a reallife scenario, it’s that many times worse,” said Lapchuk. The exercise also demonstrated that communication between responders was one of the vital elements of the successful rescue. It was the second evolution that EFRS members had on Saturday, and Lapchuk was “extremely satisfied” with how they’ve done. He noted that the further they were practising, the better they were becoming. “They are starting to learn. They are starting to understand the structure, the limitations of the tools and the limitations of the A2 » SCHOOL
Police chief explains EPS potential involvement in renovation at Estevan Comprehensive School By David Willberg dwillberg@estevanmercury.ca
The Estevan Police Service’s (EPS) potential involvement in the expansion of the Estevan Comprehensive School (ECS) would see the police have a satellite office in the building. An open house was held at the school on Jan. 27, with the South East Cornerstone Public School Division and Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division explaining what the project could look like, and why it is needed to extend the life of the school and the programs currently offered.
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The City of Estevan and the Estevan Police Service are both potential partners on the school to helping boost utilization rates. The city has voiced an interest due to the potential for a performing arts centre and a field house – two projects that have been discussed extensively in the past. But the EPS involvement has not been talked about as much. Police Chief Paul Ladouceur said he has spoken with Cornerstone director of education Lynn Little regarding the future of education in the community. Ladouceur suggested it would be a good idea to have the satellite office.
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Police Chief Paul Ladouceur “ We’ve always said we want that engagement, especially with our high school students, those kids at the Comp.,” said Ladouceur. When they saw how the plans were unfolding,
with the potential for Grade 7 and 8 students from Cornerstone and Holy Family moving into ECS, creating “a school within a school,” it made sense to Ladouceur to have an office within the school. It would be a small office similar in size to those found in the police station, with a sign indicating it is used by the EPS. A location within the school has not been selected, as this process is in the very early stages. Each day shift, Ladouceur said an on-duty member would be assigned to that office. It wouldn’t be one designated officer from each platoon assigned to the Comp.; the officer from
Tuesday’s day shift could be different from the one on Monday’s day shift. Not only would there be better engagement with the youths, with the ability to meet with youths, but there would be benefits for school safety. “There will be some parents who are a little apprehensive when it comes to sending their kids to the Grade 7-12 school, because it’s a change. We felt obviously having police embedded right in the schools builds that sense of security as well for parents and kids.” Young people could also drop by and talk to the officer. The member wouldn’t
have to spend their entire shift there. That individual would still go out on patrols and handle other duties outside the school that day. The community programming officer – a role currently held by Monica Rae – would be the “constant” in the office, splitting time between the police station and the satellite office. “The kids would get to know not just one police officer in Estevan, but most of our police officers in Estevan, and that’s the engagement we’re looking for, that any child in this community feels comfortable walking up to any of our officers and having a A2 » POLICE
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