Over 60 Grande Prairie area firefighters are at Evergreen Park this weekend for fire training sessions.
Fire fighters will spend the weekend training on six different devices, with a variety of learning out comes.
Joe Drouin is with Dräger Safety Canada, the company that supplies the training equipment.
He says the equipment builds scenarios that are as realistic as possible.
“It’s a simulator, but it’s a real fire. That’s propane at ignition temperatures of almost 1000 degrees. With the suite survival ones, that’s class A fire, so that’s wooden pallets that are used in there. That gives them nearly the type of fire that they see every day.
The equipment provides training for air management when using a breathing apparatus , tactics for fighting car and barbecue fires, and how to predict flash-over and structure decay.
Drouin says there are fire fighters of all skill levels taking part, as their training never really ends.
“You’re always trying to improve your skills, which is what the training tools are about, it’s your high-end coordination. Vehicles are a good example. In today’s vehicles with all of the air bags and all the things that move around in your car, you have pistons inside that will actually explode in a fire and come out like missiles.”
The event, which got started today, continues through to tomorrow afternoon, and is open for anyone to come out and watch.