Soldiers from Company D, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, try to escape a rolled over car Tuesday at Hohenfels, Germany. The event showed soldiers how difficult it is to escape from a vehicle while upside-down. (Rick Emert / S&S)
Soldiers from Company D, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, try to escape a rolled over car Tuesday at Hohenfels, Germany. The event showed soldiers how difficult it is to escape from a vehicle while upside-down. (Rick Emert / S&S)
Pvt. Cameron Barrows, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, laughs after coming to a dead stop in the seatbelt convincer in Hohenfels, Germany. The machine is designed to show people how valuable the seatbelt is in keeping passengers in their seats even in low-speed collisions. (Rick Emert / S&S)
A Hohenfels fire department crew cuts the driver door and part of the car frame to rescue a mock victim. The crew peeled back the top of the car after cutting the frame to demonstrate rescue procedure. (Rick Emert / S&S)
Chief Warrant Officer 3 John Tew, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Combat Maneuver Training Center, left, puts out a fire with coaching from Hohenfels Fire Department fire inspector Peter Karl Wednesday at Hohenfels. The fire department demonstrated proper use of a fire extinguisher, the danger of putting water on a grease fire and ways to prevent fires in the home. (Rick Emert / S&S)
HOHENFELS, Germany — Say the words “safety day,” and the response from soldiers will likely be groans of expected boredom.
But the safety days held Tuesday in Hohenfels and previously in Grafenwohr and Vilseck were more like action flicks that cast the participants.
Shunning the routine slide show in a dark theater, these events had everything from from falling and skidding to rolling cars and amateur firefighting.
It’s safe to say that not many of the 1,300 people at the Hohenfels event — attendance was mandatory for soldiers and Army civilian employees — nodded off during the event sponsored by the 7th Army Training Command and the 100th Area Support Group.
“We wanted this to be more interesting,” said Mark Ensign, 282nd Base Support Battalion safety specialist at Hohenfels. “This is better than cramming everyone into the post theater and having half of them fall asleep.”
The 7th ATC and 100th ASG did the theater thing last year.
“This was much better than that,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Todd Clark, aviation safety officer for the 7th ATC. “The bottom line is, it’s like raising a child, if you say one thing and it gets through, you’ve succeeded. If we can save one soldier’s life — if it gets through — than there’s no price on that. That is why we did something like this.”
The safety staffs brought in contractors with several machines that let participants experience things like how a seatbelt offers protection in a collision and how to escape from a vehicle that has rolled over. A crane dropped another car to show what the damage would be from a low-speed crash.
Fire department personnel first showed how to extinguish a fire, and then let people try it themselves.
The hands-on safety day was 7th ATC commander Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling’s idea, organizers said.
“The plan was to have a safety day brief [at the theater],” Clark said. “[Hertling] said: ‘no way.’ He wanted us to make it interesting and creative, using every asset we have.”
The result was an event that got high marks from participants.
“This has been better than any safety day I’ve ever had to go through,” said Sgt. John Rush, Company D, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment. “We actually get hands-on experience, and that will help if we ever find ourselves in these situations. This has been a lot of fun, really motivating.”
“It has been a good learning experience,” said Pfc. Brian Cheeseman, also from Company D. “No one really knows the dangers of the road, and that’s something that is hard to explain by showing a picture. This has shown us what the real effects would be.”
Clark said the event was successful in getting the safety message to the soldiers, and will likely be the norm for the summer and winter safety days held each year in the command.
“My gut feeling is that we just set the mark for how a safety day should be done,” Clark said. “I can’t see us not doing this or something better for the summer. We are already talking about it in the safety office.”
