LANIGAN 鈥� Four teams competed in Langian to prove they are the best emergency response team at the Lanigan Nutrien potash mine.
In the end, it was the Blue Team, made of up Mark Nivon, Jory Vanthuyne, Dustin Hartman, Chris McLaren, Monty Zemlak and Rick Bergermann, that won the title at the April 25 competition and the right to compete against other mines at a province-wide competition in Saskatoon at the beginning of June.
鈥淚 find the best part of this is that it gets my guys excited for training,鈥� said Ford Leggott, a safety supervisor at Nutrien Lanigan. 鈥淚t brings out the competitiveness in guys.鈥�
He said a few of the employees actually took a day or two off before the competition just to study and brush up on their manuals.
鈥淭here's no way to get guys鈥� buy-in like that unless you have a competition like this.鈥�
The tasks the teams took part in were a written exam, first aid, firefighting, an examination of respiratory and other rescue equipment, and a simulation of a rescue in the mine.
鈥淏asically what we do here is we set up some scenarios that could happen at work and we put our emergency response teams through them,鈥� Leggott said.
The mine simulation took up most of the skating surface at the Lanigan arena. The team had 50 minutes to rescue as many people as possible and try to contain a fire.
鈥淲e have this massive simulation of a mine set up and we have little traps and tricks to try to get them to do bad things,鈥� Leggott said.
The team had to make sure they always have a means of escape, something the simulation tries to trick them out of. The team had to keep an eye on ventilation. Points were earned by doing tasks like performing the right first aid techniques on the injured, as well as sealing up the fire and denying it oxygen.
At the end of the day, the teams then went to a banquet and learned who won.
鈥淭he winners then come and they do three weeks of training with me in the last three weeks in May until that provincial competition and the first weekend in June,鈥� Leggott said.
The competition will be June 1 and 2 at Saskatoon鈥檚 Prairieland Park.
鈥淚t just fuels everybody to do their best and everybody wants to go to Saskatoon to compete in that because it's get pretty good bragging rights over all the other mines.鈥�
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