BEAVER, WV (WOAY) – One week after containing an explosion and monitoring a gas leak, four departments met at the Beaver Volunteer Fire Department for a debriefing of the situation.
“We had representatives from the Beaver Fire Department, Ghent Volunteer Fire Department,” said Beaver Volunteer Fire Department Public Information Officer Will Davis. “I believe that we had a 911 operator that was there. We had someone from Jan Care that was there.”
The crews were able to go through what went right at the scene…
“The communication, right off the bat,” Davis said. “We had units on scene to describe what was going on so that the units that were in route would have an idea before they got there.”
In addition to where improvements could be made, specifically with getting all responding units to the same communication channel.
“Assigning attack channel a little bit earlier in the situation,” Davis said. “So that we all weren’t on county fire, that we had moved to attack channel.
Given the uncertainty of the explosion heading to the scene, Davis is satisfied with how the situation was handled, especially after the details of the debriefing.
“We’re very pleased,” Davis said. “To have an incident of that size and magnitude and to have this department here in the middle of Southern West Virginia to be able to handle it.”
Davis is very familiar with his own department, but he was able to get to know the other departments better through the debriefing. That could make a difference at a scene in the future with one or more of these departments often responding to calls in the area.
“When you start working with these other departments, it’s nice to be able to put faces with names,” Davis said. “To be able to work together more smoothly.”
