THUNDER BAY – Erica Parent knows firsthand the challenges of being a firefighter in a small Northwestern Ontario community.
Parent, a two-year veteran of the Schreiber Fire Department, is one of more than 225 firefighters from across the region to gather in Thunder Bay this weekend for the annual FireCon. Parent is one of just over 20 firefighters in Schreiber, with four of them travelling to Thunder Bay to participate in the FireCon.
Taking a pumper operations course during the conference to broaden her skills, Parent is aware the smaller fire departments, often heavily reliant upon volunteers, need to take advantage of as many different areas of expertise as possible.
“You’re in the middle of nowhere essentially and you have to take everyone’s skills and put them together because there might not be that emergency (service) or hospital 10 minutes away,” Parent said on Friday.
“You just have to be versatile because you never know what’s going to happen.”
To participate in that program, Parent and the others had to complete 40 hours of pre-course work prior to getting out in the field. They spent time learning the math to calculate nozzle pressure and discharge to operate the pumping mechanisms on fire trucks while also using both pressurized hydrants and drafting from bodies of water.
Atikokan fire chief Graham Warburton, who is instructing a search and rescue course, said there a combined century of experience between the leaders and participants in his component of the conference.
“This is a perfect venue to bring so much experience into one room,” Warburton said.
“Putting that together in a classroom environment, I learn from them and they learn from us. The exchange of information is incomparable.”
Provincially legislated changes have meant that Ontario fire services must adhere to National Fire Protection Association Standards, which means that all firefighters must achieve certification. Firefighters hired before July 1, 2019 have two years to become certified, while those hired after that date must possess certification. Fire chiefs can apply to have current firefighters grandfathered for certification.
While municipalities have expressed concerns about the resulting costs, having standardization seems to be welcomed by the fire community.
“It means a lot. For us as a department, we must work to a standard. Everybody needs to be trained in the same standard,” Warburton said.
“For me as fire chief, paramount is the safety of my fire crews while they’re doing their disciplines within the fire ground. To come here and bring back the same package that other firefighters have already taken, it makes us all uniformly trained to the same standard.”
Warren Brinkman, the chief of the Longbow Lake Fire Brigade and president of the Emergency North Training group that runs FireCon, said the weekend provides a valuable opportunity for services to have members enhance their capabilities.
“There’s nowhere else in Ontario that you will be able to get this kind of training for the cost,” Brinkman said. “For our purposes travelling to Thunder Bay – a regional centre – you come away with some training that’s affordable, that’s accessible and is attainable.”
