Public Safety and Justice Students Wrap up School Year with Live Fire Training

Students enrolled in the Public Safety and Justice program at Oswego County BOCES wrapped up the school year with two days of live fire training at the Oswego County Emergency Response Training Center.

As part of the program’s firefighting module, students learn about safety gear, fire safety practices, fire rescue, and essential first responder skills and techniques. The ERTC-coordinated training exercise gave the students an opportunity to put their classroom skills into action.

Working alongside Bob Loomis, Oswego County Deputy Fire Coordinator and ERTC Instructor, the students practiced extinguishing small Class A fires, electrical motor fires, chemical fires, and three-dimensional fires.

The students gained experience with pressurized water extinguishers, CO2 extinguishers, and dry chemical extinguishers.

Working as a team, the students familiarized themselves with different hose nozzles and water flow rates, practiced advancing hoseline and formulating an effective attack line.

Charles Gabriel, one of the Public Safety and Justice Instructors with 12 years of experience as a career firefighter joined the students for the training field trip and referred to the hoseline and nozzle drills as “invaluable.”

“The drills put students on both ends of the spectrum – as the person operating the nozzle and as the person advancing the line,” he said.

The students culminated their live fire training with a controlled burn in the training center’s two-story burn building.

In full turnout gear and with oxygen tanks, the students exercised their hoseline and nozzle skills to located and attack the fire.

In addition to exploring careers in firefighting, the Public Safety and Justice curriculum and hands-on learning experiences give students an opportunity explore careers in law enforcement, security, corrections, and emergency management and response.

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