Island Barrington Passage Fire Department hosting extrication competition June 15-16

BARRINGTON, N.S. — Nine teams are slated to take part in the extrication competition that will take place the weekend of June 15-16 at the Sandy Wickens Memorial Arena.
Walter Scott, fire chief with the Island Barrington Passage Fire Department, which is hosting the event, said most teams are from Nova Scotia, but two are coming from Ontario.
A team from Long Island, New York, that had been planning to take part won’t be making the trip after all.
“About a month ago, they had to back out,” Scott said. “They couldn’t get the time commitment that they needed to make it up here.”
The competition is part of a weekend that, in more official terms, is the TERC Canada Atlantic Regional Extrication Competition and Learning Symposium. (TERC stands for Transportation Emergency Rescue Committee.)
The weekend will feature various displays related to fire service, with a number of suppliers planning to attend to showcase their equipment.
This is the second competition the Barrington area has hosted, Scott said, who recalls the first one being in 2004 or 2005 or so.
As for this year’s event, the competition will start Saturday morning in the 7 or 7:30 range, he said, and will go throughout the day. It will resume Sunday morning at 9 and likely until 1 or 1:30 or thereabouts, he said.
Describing the competition, Scott said, “each team takes part in two pits. We call them pits. They get two scenarios. One is limited and one is unlimited ... (With) the limited, you can only use hand tools and (with) the unlimited, you can use anything, heavy hydraulics, stuff like that.”
Firefighters spend “quite a bit of time” doing extrication practice, he said, given the importance of the procedure, one that can help save lives in a real-life emergency.