Where there’s smoke, there’s generally firefighters.
And there was plenty of both in and around the Oliver community centre grounds Saturday on the first day of the annual BC Volunteer Firefighters Spring Seminar exercises.
About 350 volunteer firefighters from across the province are taking part in the three-day event which wraps up Sunday.
“They’re here for a weekend of fire training, there’s a lot of live fire training that’s going on It’s put on by the Volunteer Firefighters Association to give people from around the province some hands on experience,” said Oliver fire chief Bob Graham during a break in the action Saturday. “I mean without volunteers we’re not going have firefighters in a lot of small communities.”
The event kicked off Friday evening with a meet and greet at the Oliver Fire Department and included some live music.
Action got underway with an explosive opening ceremony in the bandshell area featuring everything from cars crashing through barriers, fireworks before the release of the balloons.
Related: B.C. Firefighters Spring training session in Oliver
Lt. Todd Kunz has been a volunteer with the Osoyoos Volunteer fire Department for 20 years and joined his dad who has been a member for a half century.
“I kind of grew up in the system, as a little rug rat I was running around the hall when he was at fires and I just kind fell right into it,” he said with laugh remembering his time as a kid. “In this event here today we’re teaching car fire we get a lot of fire departments here with some very new members and some of them haven’t even worn a breathing apparatus and so we teach them some of those tips and tricks as well and then we get them right into the car fires and run a couple of scenarios so it’s a lot of fun for them.
“It’s an awesome event for training.”
In total during the two days there are eight training sessions each of the groups of firefighters will rotate through.
That includes hands-on work at the Fortis light natural gas demo, rapid intervention training, tactical casualty care, Carlton Rescue low angle, swift-water rescue, dynamic rescue, building collapse, Forest Ministry wildfire and even the RCMP explosive disposal unit was on on site.
The final hour-long session is Sunday starting at 12:40 p.m.
