Train for the worst

DIXON - Doug Kitson didn't fall through the ice Saturday, but he was fished out of the water a few times. The paid-on-call firefighter played the role of accident victim Saturday while wearing a red cold-water suit to keep him warm in the frigid water. Members of the Dixon City and Rural fire departments rehearsed the drill repeatedly for about an hour at Humphrey's Pond during their annual practice for ice rescue scenarios. Click here to see video. The firefighters don't want to go over a weakening ice more than once. So each time a rescuer went to Kitson's aid, he would come from an angle leaving the shortest path to shore untouched until he was ready to pull the victim out of the water. As the firefighters approached the victim, they would hit the ice with a rescue pole to make sure it was thick enough to keep moving forward. When they were close to the hole, they would crawl on the ice to spread their weight out, to reduce the chance of falling through. When it was Brett Smith's turn to rescue Kitson, Kitson splashed around, yelled "help," acted aggressively, and pulled the Dixon Rural firefighter into the water. "I'm cold!" Kitson yelled during his distress act. Staying calm, Smith put a sling around Kitson and told him that he had a rope to connect. "We're going to pull you out, all right." Dixon City Fire Capt. Mark Callison coached Smith as he positioned his and Kitson's bodies to be pulled ashore by other firefighters. Callison told Smith to spin around. "Get him in front of you [Brett]. He's going out first." When Smith was ready, he signaled three other firefighters to pull him back to shore. "Line tenders, remember once that patient has been hooked up, you need to move to the shortest way," Callison told the firefighters on the shore. "You need to move your line over. We don't want to use that ice again." Before each run, while standing on ice that was 1-foot thick, firefighters made the rescue area a little slushy and put in some obstacles to simulate an actual rescue. "If we ever had a situation like on the river it's going to be because the ice is really thin," said Dixon City Fire Chief Tim Shipman. "We're putting the slush in there to make it like it's busted up." After the practice was complete, the firefighters headed back to the Dixon Public Safety Building for debriefing. "We'll go over it with the guys who did different things and talk about it, if there's different ideas or ways we could try things different next year," Shipman said.