A new training mannequin arrived Thursday at the fire hall on East Street in Sarnia, thanks to a photo taken by a city fire firefighter during a training exercise in September and posted online.
A new training mannequin arrived Thursday at the fire hall on East Street in Sarnia, thanks to a photo taken by a city fire firefighter during a training exercise in September and posted online.
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The image Capt. Mike Otis captured of city firefighters lowering a child-size mannequin out of a window during live fire training at the Lambton College fire school attracted the most votes in an online photo of the year competition held by Ruth Lee, a training mannequin manufacturer based in Wales.
“It was just another day of training,” said Otis, a fire life safety educator who looks after the city fire department’s social media. “We just happened to be using that brand of rescue mannequin.”
After Otis posted the photo, it was spotted by someone at the company who reached out and said it would be a good entry for its annual competition of photos of rescue crews using their mannequins.
The competition is open to entries from around the world and the winner was announced in December.
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“We won by a landslide,” Otis said. “We had over 2,700 votes. Second place (a photo from Poland) was over 700 votes.”
“I’m really happy with the response,” Otis said. Several other local social media groups spread the word about the contest to help attract votes, he said.
The prize from Ruth Lee was a free training model and representatives of ALG Safety, the manufacturer’s Canadian distributor, dropped it off Thursday.
The fire service selected a model designed for high angle rescue training as its prize. It has a value of more than $1,800.
“We were delighted,” Peggy Czepek, with ALG Safety, said about a Canada fire service winning the contest.
Czepek said she was visiting the Ruth Lee factory in Wales before Christmas and her representatives there were talking about the Sarnia photo. “They said, ‘we’re thrilled with that photo.’”
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Deputy Fire Chief Ken Dwinnell said the fire service has purchased several of the company’s mannequins.
“We’re doing a new course on high angle” rescue training so the service selected a mannequin designed for that use as its prize, he said.
There was a time, in the years before use of mannequins became widespread, rookies on fire departments might find themselves playing the role of a victim during training sessions.
“Now, from a safety perspective, we do everything we can to do training with mannequins,” Dwinnell said.
Czepek said Ruth Lee was a seamstress who was asked by a local fire department to mend her training mannequin. Lee, the mother of a Liverpool firefighter, decided she could create something that would be an improvement on the mannequin the department had, which eventually led to the company being formed.
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