A member of the City of Medicine Hat Fire and Emergency Services technical rescue team rappels from the Saamis Tepee on Monday afternoon during a training session. (Photo Courtesy Chris Brown)

By Chris Brown

Be prepared

Fire and emergency rescue team trains at Saamis Tepee

Sep 27, 2021 | 5:20 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – If you drove past the Saamis Tepee today at the right time you may have seen someone dangling from it.

Don’t worry though, those were members of the fire and emergency services technical rescue team on a training session.

“Today they’ve been working on their rappelling from heights,” explains chief training officer Garnet Decker with Medicine Hat Fire and Emergency Services. “We also like to get them up high to where they can get used to those areas and high buildings and areas that they may need to work at.”

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Five members of the 16-person team took turns climbing more than 200 feet to the top of the teepee and rappelling down.

Decker says it’s a skill they need in the event someone is trapped on a tall building, or a window washer is stuck on the side of a building.

He adds the teepee is an ideal training site.

“It’s one of the largest places we have, the tallest so it gets up to that extreme height. Also as you can see they’re free, they don’t have a building to support them so they’re up in mid-air to rappel down. It just makes it a little bit harder, and more intense I guess,” he says.

They’ll be training at the teepee next Monday again and the public is welcome to stop by and watch but is asked to stay back from the immediate training area.