More than 400 volunteer and career firefighters have been in McAlester for the last few days learning all types of new training. From vehicle extractions to rope rescues to flash over simulators. These men and women are now ready for several things and ready to work together since they have been trained the same way.
Each group spent time in the classroom before getting hands on training. They learned to cut people out of cars during vehicle accidents and be in rooms with temperatures of 900 degrees or more. Experts say you are only as good as your training.
"The skills that they have to perform the challenges of entering a burning building, to rescue someone, challenges to disentangle a car when someone is trapped in that car, or any other type of rescue situation. It's critical that we stay sharp at those skills," says Jon Hansen, Director of Oklahoma Council on Firefighter Training.
These firefighters even learned how to attack wild fires. With the past summer's conditions, the training was key to make sure everyone is ready because wild fire season will always be in Oklahoma.
"You are going to see maybe in the fall another wild land season come up and in the spring we will have another pretty good wild land season," says Hansen.
Hansen says these men and women have to prepare differently for structure fires and wild fires because decisions have to happen in seconds.
"We have tough decisions to make on who's house we will save. Who's house we may not be able to get to but fires all burn hot," says Hansen.
With this training that departments from all over the state received they are now ready to protect you on maybe your worst day.
"You want the best trained men and women to come up and help you out of that bad situation and that's exactly what's happening here these are life saving programs," says Hansen.
Kiamichi Technology Center provides about 90 percent of the funding for this training and most of the facilities during the weekend training.
