Local fire fighters from East Valley and Tri-Lakes VFD’s joined members of the Clancy VFD for annual refresher training for Wildland Fires.
About 20 firefighters gathered at Clancy’s Gruber Station on Mar. 20 for the required instruction from Jonathan Heslep of the Montana DNRC. In order for fire fighters to qualify to work on wildfires, the RT-130, or Wildland Fire Refresher Course must be completed each year. The course focuses on refreshing the fire fighter’s “Situational Awareness” on fire incidents, which focus on personal safety. That awareness tends to fade during winter, the off season for wild fires. The course reminds fire fighters of following widely recognized practices, including “LCES”, which is an acronym for “Lookout, Communications, Escape route, and Safety Zone” – four critical components firefighters must remember when on forest and wildland fires. Additionally, previous fire incidents are reviewed and discussed for “lessons learned”, to help increase safety awareness.
The training finishes with a final exam, of sorts: every fire fighter must demonstrate they can successfully deploy an emergency fire shelter in a limited amount of time. The shelters are used in the rare event of an entrapment, where fire fighters would not be able to successfully escape a potentially catastrophic “burn over” situation.
