MARINE CORPS AIR STATION FUTENMA, OKINAWA, Japan -- Instructors from the Naval Aviation Technical Training Command Pensacola, Fla., visited Okinawa to provide Marines from Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 262 with basic flight deck fire fighting training on Marine Corps Air Station Futenma June 14.
"We are here to train Marines on basic fire fighting, so they will be ready and able to deploy," said Chief Petty Officer James Fillmore, the Shipboard Aircraft Fire Fighting Course supervisor. "We do this training to help save lives."
The purpose of the course is to provide officers and enlisted personnel assigned to aviation designated ships instruction on fire fighting.
The course includes training with personal protective equipment, flight deck and hangar equipment systems, procedures and techniques for fighting fires and a simulated field-fire exercise. The curriculum covers the chemistry of fires, classifications of fires, hose handling and ship familiarization, said Fillmore.
Each Marine that takes the class is taught the dangers of flight deck fires, how quickly they can explode from a relatively small burn to a blaze as big as a house and how to take advantage of their predictable elements.
The most common accelerants for flight deck fires are aircraft fuel and hydraulic fluid, said Lt. Col. John P. Mee, commanding officer for HMM 262, and student in the course. Unfortunately, those accelerants are common on helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft carrying ships, so knowing their locations and being able to fight the fire away from them is something that comes through communication with the ship's crew.
In order to facilitate communication during an emergency situation, the course covers hand and arm motions designed to aid firefighters when verbal communication becomes difficult.
In a real flight deck fire, there is always lots of noise that makes it difficult to hear members of your team, said Mee. Hand signals are important to know so the team leaders can direct their teams to best fight the fire - and in doing so, save lives.
"I think the practical application portion went very well," he said. "It let us see the difficulty in fighting a real fire, and gave us that feeling of how things might unfold, had it been for real."
The Marines of HMM-262 are now qualified as flight deck firefighters and equipped with the skills needed to extinguish a fire on an amphibious helicopter carrier.