Staged Accident At Botsford Firehouse Was More Than Met The Eye

By Shannon Hicks

Passersby of Botsford firehouse on January 6 may have wondered how a two-car motor vehicle accident had happened just outside the front of the firehouse. Or they may have thought that the driver of a silver car being extricated from her vehicle was lucky in the sense that at least her vehicle had been hit so close to emergency rescuers.

In fact, what most people witnessed while passing the South Main Street firehouse was a drill. A video that was shot as that drill unfolded outside the United Fire Company of Botsford firehouse may soon be used in schools across the country to introduce children to the intricacies of a career in firefighting.

Bill Kiliany, a fire photographer with The Connecticut Fire Academy, spent a few hours in town last weekend, shooting video for his latest project, a video to promote firefighting as a career for children in grades K-12.

“Currently in the state of Connecticut, and across the country really, there is no basic curriculum for a vocation in the fire industry,” Mr Kiliany said this week. “My project is to show people that there’s more than what you see in the passing than a house fire or a car accident. There is so much that you can experience only by being a firefighter.

“When people see a fireman or a fire truck, their first instinct is to say ‘Where’s the fire?’” continued Mr Kiliany, who is himself a firefighter. He has been a part-time member of the fire department at Southbury Training School (where he is also employed full-time as an electrician), and has been a photographer for the CT Fire Academy for the past year. “My hope is to bring the viewer — younger kids — into the life of a firefighter, and even to show some of their specialties.”

When it is complete, probably a year or so from now, the film will cover everything from dive teams and extrications to fire departments that specialize in dealing with hazardous materials and working within confined spaces.

In his first year as a fire photographer for CT Fire Academy, Mr Kiliany has already completed two video projects.

Delivered in April, the first was a promotional film for the academy itself — the facilities in Windsor Locks, what the academy offers and its training center, what recruits can expect to be exposed to during a day when they attend training.

“That video will be used to promote the facility across the country,” Mr Kiliany said. The second video, completed in May, will be used in schools and during early stages of training at the academy. He has also done videos for LifeStar, memorial films for fire departments, and even non-industry work such as a video memory book for an elementary school.

Mr Kiliany films, edits and produces his own projects. He and three friends also write and perform the music he uses in the videos. Brett Barringer, Mike Brochman and Tom Moreau, along with Mr Kiliany, compose the music for the films, which avoids copyright issues.

“All of the distributed work uses our own music,” said Mr Kiliany.

Last weekend was the second time Mr Kiliany has worked with Botsford fire department. A few years ago he filmed the company when they were given permission to burn a building for another drill.

“I met [Bill] through one of our members who worked with him at the training school,” Botsford Chief Wayne Ciaccia said. “Fairfield Fish & Game had let us use one of their buildings for drills for a few days and then we were going to burn it down. He came out and videotaped it, and I expected a video showing just what we did. I wasn’t expecting what he came back with.

“But he did it like a filmmaker would do, which surprised everybody,” Mr Ciaccia continued. “That’s when I started talking with him about doing another video with him, and that extrication would be of some interest for us.”

The Video Shoot

The volunteer firefighters spent between four and five hours at the firehouse Saturday morning, Mr Ciaccia estimated this week. About a dozen members of the company participated in the drill. Regardless of the fact that there was a camera filming their actions, at its core the morning was a full extrication drill.

“We do about 20 to 25 extrication drills a year,” Mr Ciaccia said. “We do a lot of them. We have a pretty busy section of Route 25 running through our district, so we do our share of extrications.”

For his segment featuring the Botsford fire department, Mr Kiliany wanted to depict a two-car accident, a fire department responding to the scene, and the work that goes into getting someone out of a vehicle once they are trapped.

The first thing that needed to be done, then, was the accident. A pair of vehicles had been given to the fire department for drills, so Chief Ciaccia climbed into one — an Isuzu SUV — and drove it into the second, a Subaru four-door sedan. Cameras captured the impact from a few different views.

“He put one camera in the stationary car, one in the car that I drove into the other car, and another was mounted from outside both vehicles, so he had all views and angles of the impact covered,” Mr Ciaccia said. After the SUV was pulled away from the car, Botsford Fire Co. member Emily Nezvesky climbed carefully into the driver’s seat of the vehicle so that she could portray the role of the driver for the video.

Firefighter Jay Nezvesky served as the dispatcher for the video, staying on a radio with the engine and personal radios the firefighters were using during Saturday’s drill. The fire department was using a frequency different from its normal one so that the communications between the firefighters during the drill did not interfere with anything that would have been sent out by the town Saturday morning.

Mr Kiliany filmed one of Botsford’s engines as it left the firehouse. The “accident” was set up in part of the parking lot next to the firehouse, so the next scene shows the trucks approaching the scene — even though in reality the trucks were returning to their own parking lot.

“I pulled on to the scene first to do a size-up,” said Mr Ciaccia, which is standard for most fire department response — the first officer to arrive on a scene begins to report to dispatch what he needs in terms of crew and equipment. “I called to the engine, called for different tools, and explained that it was one female trapped inside the car. I made a game plan before the engine got there.”

Meanwhile, Mr Kiliany was filming as Botsford Engine 551 approached the scene. As the firefighters went to work, extricating the female driver from the car, Mr Kiliany used a handheld camera to capture as much of their actions as possible. Responders knew almost instinctively where they were needed, whether it was at the controls of the engine, manning a fire hose, using the Jaws of Life, and even putting down SpeedDry to soak up fluids that were leaking from the engine. The skilled coordination between the members of the fire department as they handled the pseudo emergency illustrated the amount of training that had taken place before the morning’s drill.

Likewise, it was apparent that Mr Kiliany had a good idea of what he wanted his cameras to capture during the morning’s filming and that he had gone to great pains to set up his camera shots.

“Everything went as expected,” Mr Kiliany said. “These kind of things, when they’re planned, they go well.”

“It was amazing to watch him,” said Maritza Nesvesky, who handled traffic control on Route 25 as the fire engines first left the firehouse and then returned to the “accident” scene. “He was hanging off the back of Wayne’s truck, with the camera just barely off the ground. I can’t wait — we’re all excited to see the film he gets from today.”

When it’s finished, the film will show the public many different aspects of a firefighter’s career.

“It’s going to show people that there’s a lot more to what they see and might think of already,” said Mr Kiliany. “The guys who do this every day, and even the full-time volunteers, put themselves at risk every day. I admire them.”

For information about the United Fire Company of Botsford, visit BotsfordFireRescue.com.