Georgian College's pre-service firefighting and education program marked International Firefighters' Day earlier this month with the official unveiling of a new, branded training vehicle, packed with state-of-the-art equipment.
With funding from the Ministry of Colleges, Universities and Research Excellence and Security, Georgian acquired the truck and new, industry standard tools. That includes high-efficiency hoses and nozzles, thermal imaging cameras, rapid intervention crew kits and powered equipment.
"We are able to train our pre-service fire students on all the skills and components that they need," program coordinator Bethany Readman said. "In order to meet the certification to become a certified firefighter, but then also what they would do when they were on the job."
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Students and faculty unveiled the truck publicly with the tradition of "pushing" the vehicle into the garage of Georgian's training facility in Springwater. A tradition that started when pump trucks were pulled by horses, and crews had to bring the rig in manually.
It's the program's second training vehicle, but one that is closer to what a high-level municipal fire service would use on a day-to-day basis, and an asset the program plans to use quite often.
The new equipment is a confidence-booster for current and prospective students, while also improving their learning and ensuring safety and the industry's best practices are being used right away.
"It opens up a lot more opportunities for us to create different types of training environments," Readman said. "Our instructors can get a little bit more creative, they can have a lot of fun with some different situations, different scenarios."
Similar programs around the province don't have the luxury of a road-ready fire truck like this one. For example, Cambrian College's program in Sudbury is taught entirely on-site, including the third-semester practical assessments. The majority of the vehicle's usage is outside the College's classroom, where students are very limited.
However, Georgian's program is very different, especially with the ability to train outside the everyday classroom.
"We're at the fire hall, minimum once a week for practical training and also two off-campus training exercises," said student Josh Foyston. "They had us run in, charge the hose line inside, doing search-and-rescue, basically beating it with repetitions, knowing that we're going to be confident getting on to Borden."
The program's training facility in Springwater will be the vehicle's new permanent home. However, the students will take it on a one-week trip to CFB Borden later this month, where they will be assessed on many practical scenarios, including search-and-rescue and live fire (fuel and residential). It will be the "christening" of the new vehicle, according to Readman.
