Two firefighter recruits injured in training

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By LORI PILGER / Lincoln Journal Star

A firefighter recruit training exercise took a scary turn Wednesday when one recruit fell about 15 feet from a ladder.

But he and another recruit taken to the hospital checked out OK.

Tony Grazziano lost his footing trying to carry fellow recruit Perry Siebenaler down the ladder with his weight on his knee to simulate a rescue from a third-story window of the training tower at Third and South streets just after 2:30 p.m.

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Tony Grazziano, left, and Jordan Petersen, right, are tended to after Grazziano lost hold of the ladder during firefighter training Wednesday afternoon. (Heidi Hoffman)

Tony Grazziano, left, and Jordan Petersen, right, are tended to after Grazziano lost hold of the ladder during firefighter training Wednesday afternoon. (Heidi Hoffman)

Grazziano fell parallel to the ladder hitting another recruit, Jordan Petersen, who was helping hold the 40-foot ladder.

The two hit their heads on concrete, knocking their helmets off.

Firefighters and EMTs quickly came to their aid, and, as a precaution, kept them from moving.

“I was just trying to get Perry down the ladder,” Grazziano said as they treated him.

They took Grazziano and Petersen to the hospital by ambulance on backboards.

Siebenaler wasn’t hurt.  He said Grazziano told him a split second before he fell he was having trouble.

“I knew he was struggling. The next thing I knew he just wasn’t there anymore,” he said.

Later in the day, Danny Wright, the deputy fire chief of training, said Grazziano and Petersen both checked out OK at the hospital and were going home.

“Tony’s a little stiff, but nothing was broken,” he said.

They’ll try to get them back on track today.

Wright said the skill that the recruits were working on is the same type of skill firefighters used at the Nebraska Wesleyan University fire a little more than a year ago.

“It just goes to show you that it  is trying to ask ordinary people to do extraordinary things,” he said.

In 12 years, Wright said, he hasn’t seen another accident with the same potential for injury.

By 4:30 p.m., he’d already met with trainers to talk about ideas on how to implement a safety rope for other exercises like this one.

Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com.