Fire fighters come from all over the state to train at the Cambria County site. On Sunday, they couldn’t wait to start working in the new burn building, which took a couple years to fund. 

 

Training site Chairman John Hocksworth explained, “A fire training ground without a burn building is like a car without gas. You have to train in fire to be a fireman.”

 

Training in the burn building is necessary for firemen. It’s the experience that gets them ready for the real thing. 

 

Frank Hribar, the lead instructor for the burn building explained, “When you go in there, you have to have some sort of experience. If you don’t, you know, we’re sending somebody in to immediately dangerous to life and health environments. If you breath this hot smoke and toxic gases, you’re going to die.”

 

It takes several weekends to learn the skills necessary to go into burning buildings, but you have to start somewhere. Sunday was also that start for those who might be interested in joining their local fire companies. 

 

Those in the public who are interested in joining a fire company were able to try out some of what it takes to be a firefighter. Jerry Burkhart from the Dauntless Fire Company helped instruct the sessions. He detailed, “We give them a taste of the fire service and the different things that we may need to see. To see if they’d like to do this or if it’s something that they say that ‘it’s not for me.'”

 

For local stations, new volunteers are needed. John Kane is a marketing recruitment consultant for volunteer fire companies. Kane explained the purpose of today’s try out, “It’s important to get our message out to the public that they understand that we really need volunteer fire fighters and that we would go to this extent to stage an event so that people can actually try the experience before they buy into joining their local fire department.”

 

Kane encourages those interested in joining up to go to their local fire houses for more information. You can get more information on joining a volunteer fire company by going to the recruitment website.