The Alaska Fire Conference has offered a variety of training classes to over 250 statewide firefighters this week.
Elena Fernandez with the Cordova Volunteer Fire Department said it’s a great mix of classroom and hands-on training.
Fernandez: “Aircraft ARF class, or Aircraft Rescue Firefighter class that we’re doing right now, it’s been really really exciting getting some hands-on training, I’m from a small department and we don’t have any simulators like this so it’s hard to get live fire training so it’s great that we have the tools here to do it.”
Heather Buben said the live fire training exercises were her favorite so far.
Buben: “I’m from Palmer and we don’t get a whole lot of this there, even though we have several landing strips, several airports around the area, I saw this class and decided to jump on the opportunity to learn something I haven’t learned yet.”
The Conference moves to different towns each year, hitting the Kenai Peninsula about once every ten years. Conference Information Officer Bud Sexton said that since the last time it was here they’ve been able to improve the available training technologies.
For KSRM’s article on the conference’s Helicopter Egress Training, click here.