Jessica: EOC offers firefighter training classes twice a year.
And right now, there's a waiting list of students interested in the academy.
And while CareerTech is fairly new at offering firefighter training,
Oklahoma State University has been doing it for more than fifty years.
And that's where Lawrence Hillman picks up the story.
I'm Lawrence Hillman here at the
Oklahoma State University training site where volunteers and
full-time firefighters from all across the state are trained.
It began back in the 1930s.
Ralph Brown: Well, fire service training has been providing training for the
rural firefighter and also metropolitan firefighters through many, many years.
Lawrence: Ralph Brown is the director of fire service training at
Oklahoma State University, a program training more than 30,000 firefighters
throughout the state each year.
Brown: We do a great deal of our training probably 90 percent of our training
is away from Stillwater.
And we do that with mobile training simulators that are mounted on trailers,
equipment that firefighters use in their training.
And we go out to the local level, to the local fire department, and provide
training for the rural firefighters that cannot come to Stillwater because
they work during the day, and they need to
be there to protect their communities.
Lawrence: A full-time commitment from the volunteer,
that's often challenging.
Bob Allen heads the fire service certification.
Bob Allen: The challenge that we run into with volunteers, and we need to
keep in mind that, a volunteer is tasked with the same thing as someone
that is paid to do that job.
They are receiving training that interrupts their lifestyle, puts
hardships on their family.
So it's nothing but love and dedication to make sure that they're
achieving greatness in what they're doing.
Lawrence: Steve George is assistant director of
OSU's Fire Service Training.
Steve George: Safety, of any profession, really starts with training, with
that person's knowledge and their understanding of the hazards of the job,
and how to avoid those hazards, how to work around those hazards.
And this training, really, is the base to allowing those firefighters to know
how to do their job safely.
The needs of the job are consistently changing,
as technology changes in our environment.
Lawrence: Fulfilling a call of duty that's keeping Oklahoma in the
limelight of fire safety.
Lawrence: Officials here expect this to be a very busy year as firefighters
prepare for what could be a very stressful fire season.
Rob: Thank you both.
To see what else is being done to help rural firefighters, just head to
our website and click on value added.