Course Description

Preparation for heavy-vehicle rescue begins long before the initial dispatch. These low-frequency, high-hazard incidents demand a technical understanding of load paths, lifting dynamics, and stabilization principles—skills that can only be built through focused, reality-based training. The Introduction to Heavy Vehicle Rescue program provides students with the fundamentals and repeatable systems needed to operate confidently at incidents involving heavy vehicles. Through four hours of classroom instruction and ten hours of hands-on training, students learn to perform load assessments, develop stabilization and lifting plans, and fully understand the capabilities and limitations of their department’s rescue equipment. Students’ progress from fundamental concepts to an in-depth tool lab and, ultimately, to guided scenarios that reinforce plan development, crew resource management, and operational execution. This program meets and exceeds all applicable NFPA Operations-Level requirements for heavy-vehicle rescue and prepares responders to perform safely, efficiently, and effectively at these highly technical incidents.

 

Classroom Objectives:

• Provide a detailed understanding of load assessment, including weight distribution, load paths, and the forces acting on heavy vehicles.

• Establish a systematic approach to lifting & Stabilization plan development, addressing tool capability, lift sequencing, load-shift potential, and operational safety factors.

• Explain the physics of rescue tools, focusing on mechanical advantage, force vectors, working-load limits, forces applied to tools, and how these principles influence tool application.

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Hands-on Training Objectives:

• Understand working-load limits, tool capacities, and system limitations, and how these factors apply to real heavy-vehicle configurations using departmental equipment.

• Learn proper application and placement of stabilization and lifting tools—including cribbing, struts, airbags, jacks, and mechanical systems—to control movement and support changing load paths.

• Perform correct operation of hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical rescue tools while recognizing the forces they generate, the forces they receive, and how those forces interact with the load.

• Understand the special considerations that affect tool and system performance, including lift angles, surface conditions, suspension geometry, and load-shift potential.

• Learn to complete a full load assessment on a heavy-vehicle setup and translate that assessment into a workable stabilization and lifting plan.

• Understand and apply crew resource management principles—role assignment, communication loops, task sequencing, and operational tempo—to maintain control of the operation.

• Perform the stabilization and lifting plan in a guided, reality-based environment where accuracy, efficiency, and control are reinforced at each phase.