Tech Rescue talk

Open Enrollment Courses

Steve Disick

April 5, 2021

We are excited to announce multiple Open Enrollment courses and clinics that can take you or your team members from basic rescue knowledge to advanced specialty clinics. All of these courses are on our website now and are open for registration.

Read More

April Fools! Tandem Twin Tension Rope Systems

Steve Disick

April 1, 2021

The new website has officially launched, however that was not at all an April Fools joke. Our Facebook and Instagram post of the "Tandem Twin Tension Rope System - TTTRS" absolutely was a joke, and we managed to hook a few big fish on that one! Honestly we are still laughing about it.

Read More

Fall Protection in the Rescue Training Environment

Cliff Freer

December 29, 2017

The fire service is an amazing and rewarding profession with limitless potential. Like many other professions we face challenges that go way beyond our responses. Unions fighting for salaries, manning, training and equipment. Insurance prices increase to the same proportion as our benefits decrease. We have an enormous amount of latitude while we are operating at the scene of an emergency to accomplish our goals and occasionally we get injured and sometimes it’s much worse. That will always be as noble as it is regrettable. First Responders work in hazardous environments. That requires us to simulate these environments as best we can to achieve realistic and effective training. When someone gets injured it always forces us to take that moment to pause, that gut check that we did right by the people we are responsible for. Risk can rarely be eliminated completely but with a good look how we manage and setup our training environments we can get close while still providing excellent training.

Read More

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY

Pete Hall

October 29, 2015

Five minutes into a seemly routine fire in a small two family you hear a crew on the floor above you call a MAYDAY. It’s a quick transmission and you were not quite ready to hear it, you didn’t hear the details and there is no follow up….


This is potentially one of the most stressful and challenging moments we can come across in our career. Hearing, or worse having to call a MAYDAY.
First up let’s deal with the stigma of even calling a mayday in the first place. We all know we work in an environment where peer pressure is at its highest, it’s what makes us want to improve ourselves, impress our peers with our skill set and knowledge. But could it hurt us? Could we be put in a situation that has all the potential to go bad and be reluctant to call for help at the fear of a bit of healthy ribbing after? Sure we could, sitting here reading a witty blog its easy to see that’s a bad idea, and a little (or even a lot) of teasing down the road is worth going home to our loved ones. Another reason we may not call is thinking we can fix the issue and get out alone. Wouldn’t it be better to have the help coming early and turn them away if they are not needed? The take away is, if we think we are in trouble, or could be in trouble soon, we should make the call. OK, I think we all get the message.

Read More

Saving Bacon...

Pete Hall

September 23, 2015

We never know what we are going to find ourselves doing here at CTR. We could be running boats in the Long Island sound, crawling through a deliberately collapsed house in Vermont or standing by to drag someone from a permit required confined space. Back in the spring however we got to take on a new job, one for which we had not been tasked with before, we stood by, ready to save Bacon!

Kevin Bacon and his friends (when I say friends, I mean the production company and staff) were filming a chase scene for the season finale of the TV show “The Following” in downstate New York. They had worked up an exciting stunt that involved a potential fall in the Croton River, and had nicely asked us if we could come play also. How could we say no to Kevin Bacon?

Read More

Indoor Training Facility

Cliff Freer

June 25, 2015

Over the years we’ve had the opportunity to train in some great facilities.  We’ve been given access to a kiln in a concrete plant, a pulp digester in a paper mill and a 60 ton gantry crane in a container port, just to name a few.  We’ve also struggled to find good training sites to ensure that the training would be realistic, informative and challenging. With those lessons learned we started making plans to build a training facility that we could host clients in that would provide a realistic and challenging environment.

Read More