Hard work, passion, and a little ingenuity is all you need to come up with fantastic company level training. You don’t need a big training facility to put on great training, you just need to use some imagination.
This is a prop that the Austin Fire Department in Texas put together for training their members in car removals in swift water rescue situations.
They put a car into a boat launch so that most of the car was submerged, they then used handlines of an engine company and a fire boat to cause the river like effect. This allowed them to preform various removal techniques in easily controllable situations.
Not only does it get your members out doing swift water training but it also gets you out stretching hose, pumping your lines, ropes and knots, medical, setting up your ladder truck, and anything else that you wanted to put into the scenario.
http://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/first-responders-prepare-for-low-water-crossing-rescues
So get out their and push your training to the next level. A serious “hat tip” to the Austin Fire Department on this training.
I have always wanted to do a similar training excercise with a vehicle on a boat ramp, but performing extrication. I feel it would add another element that is good training for car in a ditch or drainage pond or the occasional flash flooding we get on the gulf coast.