By Cheryl Jahn

Volunteer fire departments to share provincial training funding

Mar 6, 2024 | 4:09 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – “With this new government grant is coming out. I think the regional district got $390,000, give or take. So I think they’re dividing that up. So every fire department is going to get about $30,000 for their training budget to upgrade their training budget. So that’s going to help a lot.”

Lyle Wood is the Fire Chief for the Pineview Volunteer Fire Department, which has 23 members; a healthy fire department by many standards. It covers over 80 square kilometres for fire response and over 800 square kilometres for rescue response.

Prince George is no stranger to firefighter training. It happens often near the airport. It’s called live-fire training.

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“So live fire training provides a facility to allow firefighters to train on structures,” explains Melanie Perrin, Senior Manager of Public Safety Operations. “So something like a residential structure fire, like a house or commercial buildings . It also allows them to train on vehicle fires.”

And that is what the province is funding through various regional districts including the regional district of Fraser Fort George. And the job of volunteering for a fire department – of which there are well over 200 souls in the regional district – is not for the faint of heart.

“When we get a new recruit from the time they start reading the book as anywhere from six months to a year,” says Wood. “So and that’s every Thursday night and sometimes weekends. And that’s just to get your basic firefighter training. Then you got your fire on top of that. And then we got auto extrication, we got some hazmat, we got some rope rescue. It’s a pretty big commitment for anybody that wants to come join our fire department or any other volunteer fire department.”

And the training standards for volunteer firefighters are the same for the likes of full-time municipal firefighters. And a shocking amount of public safety is handled by volunteers.

“Eighty percent of the firefighting force in British Columbia is staffed by volunteer firefighters,” says Perrin. “And so, really, a large geographical area of the province, a large part of the public safety of the province, is provided by volunteer firefighters.

Melanie Perrin and Lyle Wood agree that any time some funding can come to training is much appreciated.