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The goals of the academy-the basic goals are to promote firefighter safety and assist them
in completing classes that will help them to be safe on the fireline and have the skills
that they need. We then offer NWCG certificates to them upon completion, which opens the door
in a lot of ways not only qualifying them for their red cards.
A lot of classes are offered to help not only the firefighters, which is our basic concern,
but those people who support the firefighters. We hold the academy each year at Snow College
here in Richfield Utah. It's centrally located; it is in a fairly easy place for everyone
in the State of Utah interested in attending the academy to come, so we have students here
from the Bureau of Land Management from Bureau of Indian Affairs the Forest Services, Fish
and Wildlife, the Park Service and volunteer fire departments so we have a great representation
from a lot of state, local and federal communities and we are excited about that.
The Utah Wildfire Academy has been in existence for about ten years now, and we've probably
processed through during that time four to five thousand students and we've also had
media and various entities actually participate in those classes.
You know, I'm excited about the academy and the opportunity to be a part of what we do
every year. It’s particularly exciting to me to see the enthusiasm of the young firefighters
that come on board and the experience that they get and the things that they learn when
they’re in their classes and then when they go out on the line it’s fun to watch. There
is just so many great classes-its fun to watch the public affairs class and all that they're
learning. The fire investigations course is great and there's so much to learn there and
it’s fun to see the enthusiasm and excitement of the students in so many classes so I'm
just excited to be a part of it. We can learn the basics and then you can learn specialties
depending on what your area of interest is so I think it’s terrific training-great
instructors, very knowledgeable and uh... it's just going to be a question of retaining
all that knowledge. I just think it's a great opportunity and
a great effort among the different agencies-the Forest Service, the BLM, State of Utah, BIA
amongst others to put something like this on, it's a huge benefit to incoming firefighters
and veteran firefighters.
I think having facilitators and instructors that have a lot of experience, years of experience
on-the-job doing this, having a panel of them working to train us, it's been just incredible.
I think it's probably the experience like getting to see really skilled experienced
instructors and getting to talk to them, getting to know them and know that I'll be able to
contact them when I get out and I have questions. I feel like there's a relationship being built
with the instructors.
The benefit that I’ve gotten out of this is the opportunity to see the people that
are going through these courses are future firefighters-you know, it's a great thing
to see the kids come in their first year-they don't know a thing, they go on their first
fire and then you watch them develop through the years and they come back and take additional
courses and just how much more confident they are in their abilities-how much they have
learned. You watch them grow up and get better at what they do and i think this academy provides
lots of opportunities for people to do that and that's one of the things I've enjoyed
about it. You know, because I figure somebody took a chance, and took time out of their
schedule to train me up when I was still coming up the ranks and trying to learn and uh…
i keep doing it now because I lost a special friend over the years and I figure if there's
something that I can say or some knowledge I can give other folks that'll help keep them
safe, that's what keeps me doing it now.
I've taught the S-200 which is the Initial Attack IC (Incident Command) Class. I've helped
out in the information officer class and for the last couple of years; I've been teaching
the rookie class, the S-130, 190 Class. The rookie class-they come in there not knowing
pretty much anything about the job and we hope by the end of the week that we've given
them at least the skills and the knowledge they need to be able to keep themselves safe
out there. You know they'll pick up the fine-tunes of how to sharpen their shovel and stuff.
You know, during, on the job we try to give them the stuff that's gonna get them home
to their loved ones. First time they've ever had an opportunity
to go out and really experience fires it is just, it's just a blast for me. I just love
it. You can see these kids, you know they've been fighting fire all day. It's been new
to them, a huge experience in their lives and you see these kids come in as enthusiastic
as can be. And so many of them have never worn their boots before and they come in and
by the time they’re kind of off duty and they’re having their dinner, they'll have
flip-flops on and the bloody feet and blisters and what not. And big smiles on their faces-they've
just had the time of their lives so I think that's the favorite part for the students.