The Alaska Firefighter Conference has assembled and trained over 250 firefighters from across the state this last week.
Dan Grimes with the Fairbanks Fire Department explained how the hands on training each year benefits the firefighters.
Grimes: “I think it gives them an idea of what they might see in their community, being it’s something that isn’t practiced often in local structural fire departments, it’s something no one sees often and it’s something that no one sees often, because of that it’s something that you have to constantly perform recurrent training on, because if you don’t, it may be something where the skills, they don’t have them at all or they just deteriorate over time, everything has a shelf life, so this just gives them a chance to practice practice practice.”
Another benefit of having the conference in Kenai is that more local crews can get that hands on training without the cost of traveling to the conference.
Sam Sathathite with the Kenai Fire Department has been an instructor in many of this years training exercises.
He has coordinated the Firefighter Skills Competition set for tomorrow at 11 am following the Cameron Carter Memorial Run.
Sathathite: “One is a SCBA competition where participants will race to an air pack and put the air pack on as fast as they can, we’ll have another station where people have a fire extinguisher and they’ll have to run and put out a burning barrel, we’ll have a ladder race competition and then what we call a make and break where they’ll connect and disconnect hoses to a hydrant and then to the end of the hose and back. All of these are times events that teams compete in.”
The run will begin at 9 am at the Kenai Fire Department Station #2 near the airport and the firefighter skill competition to follow. There will also be a pancake breakfast cooked by the Kenai Rotary Club.