Kevin Lanford was sweating along with his crew Monday morning outside of Orange Beach fire department’s training facility.

Firefighters had donned all their gear and rushed into a smoky building, tramped up and down stairs and went through a variety of exercises all in the name of being prepared.

“You don’t rise to the occasion,” Battalion Chief Lanford said later, “you default to your level of training.”

As sweat poured off the firefighters gathered in the grass outside the facility, Lanford took the opportunity to relate a poignant story about the “Ohio technique.”

“A fireman in the ‘80s, he had fallen through a floor or something and they just couldn’t get him up the ladder,” Lanford told the gathering. “He was unconscious and he ended up dying. He was two shifts from retiring.”

This, Lanford says, is why the impromptu training sessions are used to help firefighters innately know how to react in those dangerous situations.

“It was our regular crew, regular training that we do,” Lanford said. “We were just going some breathing apparatus training. We want to create a little bit of smoke in there, went in there and had them practice doing some self-rescue and some assisted training. “

Once the smoke gets going good, the firefighters are sent in with air packs and practiced sharing the air if one runs out of air. Each is paired with a partner and they are there not only battle the blaze, but to watch each other’s back as well.

“We have a system that if one firefighter’s air pack runs low, we can hook them to the other firefighter’s air pack and provide enough air for the rescue,” Lanford said. “Its equipment we use every day or we wear every day, but with not a lot of fires we don’t actually have to use it. It’s a chance to use it and get some practice with it. It’s one of those skills that we use regularly, we just wanted to get out there, and I hate to say ‘play,’ get ‘em out there, get ‘em in their gear, make ‘em sweat a little bit and kind of remind us of what we are doing.”

The ‘fire’ was provided by burning some paper and hay – “just enough to create that atmosphere” — with idea of having a bunch of smoke before starting the training. It was a hot morning.

“I had ‘em going up and down stairs and back and forth,” Lanford said. “It was pretty smoky. If the air pack hadn’t worked they would have been breathing smoke and coughing. That was why we put the smoke in there.

“We limited the visibility and the higher you get the thicker the smoke got because it was rising up. It’s pretty good training.”

Once a firefighter’s air is out and he hooks up to his partner’s air, “then it’s time to get out.”

“Your air’s not going to last a lot for yourself then you’re equalizing the bottle with your partner,” Lanford said. “There’s two of you so you’re breathing twice as fast. It’s a rescue technique. You’re practicing rescuing each other, rescuing downed firefighters.”

The main focus of the training was firefighter safety.

“Unfortunately a lot of firefighters get killed on the job every year,” Lanford said. “So we take every opportunity to learn from experience. For us, this is a skill we have to know. It’s a basic skill, basic fundamentals.

“But we have to remember to practice those basic fundamentals. It wasn’t anything new, it wasn’t anything special. It’s like reading and writing.”