COEUR d’ALENE — When Mike Sowl works a big job, such as demolition of a hotel, he thinks about what could go wrong.

Sowl, a construction superintendent for Ginno Construction in Coeur d’Alene, considers angles and height, stairwells, scaffolding and the maze of rooms and hallways.

He does this as part of a safety plan that is required for each job site.

And then he calls the fire department.

It’s his ace in the hole.

“I like working with the fire department,” Sowl said. “They are the first ones that come to help us if we have any problems.”

He invites firefighters to visit construction sites, walk through and familiarize themselves with the lay of the job as they make mental notes. They consider what could happen, where prospective problems could lurk and how best to respond to potential hazard areas.

That is just what crews of Coeur d’Alene firefighters did Tuesday morning on the Ginno construction site at the Shilo Inn on the 700 block of Appleway Avenue.

As construction crews worked on the five-story structure, Sowl had fire crews join in for a series of drills in an effort to provide firefighters with hands-on, high angle extrication training, and to show his own crews how the rescue efforts looked from the ground.

“We used it as a full-site safety meeting,” Sowl said.

Crews from Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai Fire and Rescue learned from the two-hour exercise as well.

As motorists sped past on the interstate, throughout a day the color of a wet dish towel, firefighters and instructors removed a pretend victim with a neck injury from a five-story scaffolding using a backboard, a mesh basket and a ladder truck.

“It’s not every day we get a five or six-story scaffold and have to get someone down if they’re injured,” Battalion Chief Lee Holbrook said.

Fire inspector Craig Etherton, who took part in the training — as well as a roof rescue — said the learning went both ways.

“They shut down the job site for two hours so their guys could see and ours could see what (a rescue) might take,” Etherton said.

The exercise instilled confidence in both teams.

“Watching how the firefighters approach the job in those situations, methodically and confidently, gives us a good feeling,” Stow said.