JAY — Acting fire Chief Mike Booker on Monday gave selectpersons an overview of firefighter training in Farmington and Jay.

The two days of training was conducted by Maryland-based Traditions Training LLC. The company is made up of veteran firefighters from East Coast.

The Franklin County Firefighters Association funded most of the cost and each participant paid $50, Booker said.

There were eight hours of lectures, including a class on 25 rules to stay alive and reduce firefighter injuries and deaths, he said.

Seventy percent of firefighters who die in the line of duty do so in residential home fires, Booker said.

Firefighters were also put through a rigorous and intense obstacle course to get firefighters comfortable with carrying self-contained breathing apparatus.

Firefighters wore masks during the training but the masks were blacked out so they couldn’t see, Selectperson Tim DeMillo said. He watched some of the training. DeMillo and his wife, Mary Howes, have let firefighters use a building on the Otis Falls Mills, the former Otis paper mill, for the past couple of years to conduct training.

Some areas firefighters had to go through were so small, Booker said, that they had to take off air packs to get through. The training taught firefighters how to stay calm in very dangerous situations and what could be done to survive, he said.

“It’s top-notch training,” he said.

If the Jay department has to kick in some money in the future for the training, he said, it would be well worth it.

“It is a great opportunity” for firefighters to learn how to save their own life or somebody else’s life, Booker said.

dperry@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link