They heaved Randy down a hallway toward a window, keeping a hand or foot on the hose at all times so they did not get off track, breathing heavily through their air masks. They never made it.

Fortunately, this was just a drill.

The smoke was from a smoke machine, the firefighters did not have debris falling on them, and Randy — well, Randy was around 240 pounds of hose, bunched up so he would have two arms and two legs.

All over the former Adirondack Medical Center building on Church Street, firefighters from several Franklin and Essex County departments practiced firefighting and life-saving situations, learning how to work together and discovering where they need to improve themselves.

Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department Chief Torry Hoffman said it is important for firefighters to stay sharp. He said every member goes through a training when they start, and keeps up on minor training all the time. However, most volunteers have other jobs and don’t get the chance to do these serious trainings all the time.

Hoffman said his department responds to around 400 calls a year. Most of these are just alarm activations — not actual fires. He said it is good for departments to work together practicing high-intensity situations.

“We actually did a lot of prepping for this at the beginning of the year,” Hoffman said. “The idea was to, monthly, go to a different department. COVID shut us down.”

This was the second training session they’ve done since.

“It helps us work together in the future if we’re on the same page for training,” Hoffman said. “It helps us with communication, it helps us to see how they work and it helps them to see how we work.”

Lake Placid hosted this training with the Saranac Lake, Paul Smiths-Gabriels and Bloomingdale volunteer fire departments — the ones that would respond to mutual-aid calls in Lake Placid from the Franklin County side.

The town of North Elba owns the empty medical building and let the fire departments use it.

Another crew practiced cutting holes in the roof to ventilate and cool down the building. In the back, two other crews practiced setting up ladders and performing window rescues. In the basement another crew dragged a water hose through an increasingly smoky hallway.

The lightless corridors were now filled with smoke so thick, even the departments’ strong flashlights could not penetrate it. The smoke machine is harmless, but it suffocates their vision. In the thick air, they aimed at a target, fired and hit it with a stream of water.

Hoffman said this training session also pinpoints which skills individuals need to improve.

The rescue of Randy failed because one member, who was sucking down a lot of air from his backpack tank, was running low on oxygen.

He took off his mask.

“I died,” he said.

The department member running the drill mimicked calling a mayday — which in a real situation would bring backup running — and told the member he has to work on using less oxygen while getting the task done as quickly as possible. Randy’s life depends on it.

They would reset and try it again.