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SALT LAKE CITY — You can't be scared of heights and do what a special Salt Lake City firefighting team does. They try to make their training as real as it can get.
Justice Seely loves everything about being a Salt Lake City firefighter — except maybe having to walk across a crane 100 feet in the air.
And if that wasn't enough, he then had to go down a rope and just dangle there so his firefighter teammates could practice saving him Tuesday afternoon.
There are more tall buildings being constructed in downtown Salt Lake all the time. One of them is the new public safety building, which means a construction crane. So, Seely and his crew figured, why not train there?
Sure, firefighters train all the time, but the crane training was unique. The scenario: a construction worker fell off a crane but is held up by safety ropes. The rescue crews have to go get him.
Seely was the pretend victim, happy when he finally got to be back on the ground.
"Down here, you don't get the real perspective," he said. "As soon as you get up there, you get the wind; then your gut kicks in, and the fear kind of hits you."
But that's why he and his fellow firefighters train: so if they're ever in this position, they're not so worried about looking down. They just trust each other, their training and their equipment.
"It's double- and triple-checked by all the guys. That way, it's fail-safe," Seely explained.
Another scenario the crew trained on was was the crane operator having a medical issue. Tyler Pulsipher, a Okland construction worker, played the role of the crane operator. He was strapped in and, little by little, was lowered to the ground.
Pulsipher said the training makes his team feel safe. "We never hope for accidents like that to happen," he said. "But in our industry, it does happen."
Which is why this type of unique training is necessary — just in case.
On Monday, this same team rescued an autistic boy who was stuck inside a chimney. They trained for something like that, which may never happen again, but you never know.
They're always trying to come up with new scenarios to practice.
