For the first time in roughly two years, the BC Wildfire Service will be providing hands-on, firefighting training to 18 local high school students.
The group of Grade 11 and 12 students from the Kamloops-Thompson School District will take part in firefighting skills and knowledge training with wildfire firefighters on four days next week, April 27 to 30.
Wildfire Officer Hugh Murdoch says the opportunity allows students to gain exposure to what recruitment is like for the BC Wildfire Service.
“Our firefighters acting as instructors to this group, and they will be getting a whole lot of different, hard skills invested into them,” he said.
Over the four days, Murdoch says the students taking part in the sessions will get to experience a lot of hands-on firefighter training.
“They will be longer days than their school days, and a lot of it will be spent out in the field there will be hands-on training on hand tools, pumps, hose, learning the fundamentals of firefighting and water delivery, but there will (also) be things about tree species, radio communications, working in and around heavy equipment,” he said.
The BC Wildfire has hosted youth training programs like this across the province for many years, though it had to cancel it over the last couple of years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Months ago, we reached out to the school district recognizing it’s been a couple of years since we have run this program because of COVID. But in the previous months, the school district has been canvasing all their high schools and there has been tremendous interest across the school district,” Murdoch said.
He also thinks there are a number of people interested in becoming wildfire firefighters after the busy wildfire season last year. This group of 18 students, he says, will come away with new skills and training that hopefully lead to a future job with BC wildfire Service.
“It got us a lot of attention and I think there will be a lot of youth that will be intrigued by the idea of working on our crews,” he said.
“They probably saw it as really challenging but really rewarding work as well and I think a lot of people out there still want to be working in the outdoors and having these meaningful tasks.”
