Man Vs Machine Seminar at Islip Town Fire Museum

Photo by John Walthers- Suffolk Fire Photos Firefighter Luke S from Sound Beach works at the Meat Grinder Station at the Man VS Machine Seminar.

Photo by John Walthers- Suffolk Fire Photos Firefighters learn about impalements at man Vs Machine Seminar at Islip Town Fire Musuem

Photo by John Walthers- Suffolk Fire Photos Firefighters from departments work together at the meat grinder scenario at at man Vs Machine Seminar at Islip Town Fire Musuem

Photo by John Walthers- Suffolk Fire Photos Man Vs Machine Training at Islip town Fire Museum.

Photo by John Walthers- Suffolk Fire Photos An Instructor from Pl Vulcan Teaches Basic Ring Removal .

Photo by John Walthers- Suffolk Fire Photos The 2023 Spring Man Vs Machine Seminar attendees and instructors in front of the Islip Fire Museum
Central Islip N.Y.- On the weekend of May 5th and 6th, Islip Town Fire Museum Hosted a Man Vs. Machine Seminar. The seminar featured instructors from PL Vulcan training. Firefighters from Nassau and Suffolk Counties attended the seminar. This years training consisted of 2 days of training. The first night of training was Friday May 5th which consisted of the lecture portion of the training.
On Saturday May 6th the down and dirty hands-on portion of the seminar took place. Firefighters were split in to 1 of 4 groups. Once assigned a group the groups were sent to stations where they would learn skills that could be used for different types of technical type rescues that they may encounter. The stations ranged from basic ring stuck on a finger which could be handled using different types of skills such as soap and a rubber band or may require more drastic measures such as cutting it off with snips or a grinding tool depending on the severity of how bad the ring is stuck.
There were also stations to learn how to get a hand out of a industrial type meat grinder. This station involved cutting the meat grinder open in such a way that the hand could be freed. There was also training on other industrial machinery incidents like a hand in an auger in which the members of the responding crew would have to secure the machinery ( lock out tag out) and then they learned how to either disassemble by removing the bolts or shearing off the blots if that was needed .
The last incident that the firefighters trained for was impalements. For this station a maniquen was impaled on a fence and the firefighters would need to work together to get the maniquen down. This particular exercise required strategizing and communicating with one another. All of this training at the seminar had the firefighters paired with members of other departments which helped them to not just learn from the instructors but also from one another. Once the attendees were finished going through all the stations a quick debrief and Question answer/ Feedback session was done to recap things learned and provide clarity where needed.