A firefighter takes part in training exercises March 30 at the Cambria County Regional Firefighters Association’s fire training academy in East Carroll Township. Photo courtesy of Samantha Smith, Fully Involved Photography

PATTON — The Cambria County Regional Firefighters Association’s fire academy training classes offer learning opportunities for hundreds of firefighters across Pennsylvania, said Lianna Weir, the association’s public information officer.

The 71st-annual fire academy kicked off Friday, April 4, with classes at the Cambria Heights High School in Clearfield Township and the association’s fire training academy in East Carroll Township. A second weekend of advanced education and hands-on training was held this past weekend at both locations. The academy wraps up next week, according to Weir.

“One of the things we strive to do is offer trainings for everybody at the firehouse,” Weir said, adding not everyone is an interior firefighter and department members who serve other functions of the fire service, such as operating fire trucks or taking photographs of scenes under investigation, need training, too.

“There’s a lot more (involved with firefighting) than just running into a burning building or responding to a car accident,” Weir said. “We try to offer a variety of classes that appeal to everybody.”

Bobbie Sue Noble of the Vintondale Fire Department said she and her daughter, Madison Yoder, were excited to learn something new from the association’s fire photography 101 class. Noble has attended the association’s fire academy for 23 years.

“You learn something new every time,” she said.

Samantha Smith, the photography class instructor, said she has been doing photography off and on since 2018 and does work with multiple fire departments throughout Blair County, including the Freedom Township Fire Department and the Tyrone Blazing Arrow Fire Department.

Smith said photos can be used to assist fire investigations, but there’s a fine line of privacy that shouldn’t be crossed when taking photographs at an emergency scene, she said.

“That’s one of the big things I’m going to focus on is privacy and modesty with it because you see a lot of bystanders just taking pictures. But they don’t realize that could be your family or their family,” Smith said.

Macey Davison of the Hope Volunteer Fire Department in Northern Cambria said she’s attended the fire academy weekends every April since 2016 when she joined her department.

“Training is what we live off of,” Davison said. “If we don’t have the training, then we can’t perform adequate service to our communities, so it is very important that fire companies come out and train.”

April Corle of the Northern Regional Fire Department, which formed earlier this year by the merger of the Windber Fire Department and the Scalp Level-Paint Volunteer Fire Co., she and her son, Zach, drove to Patton from Windber this year to be a part of the academy for the first time.

The two attended a vehicle technical rescuer class together.

Other classes offered included driver operator pumper, arson awareness for emergency response personnel, air monitoring instrumentation, rapid intervention teams and fire prevention for special needs individuals — a class taught by Kris Siegert, a fire and life safety instructor from the Mount Lebanon Fire Department in Allegheny County.

Siegert said he appreciated the opportunity to present his programs to a new audience.

“People aren’t doing fire and public safety nationally, let alone regionally,” Siegert said, adding he does not encourage the teaching of stop, drop and roll to children.

Siegert said children are not setting themselves on fire and are not getting their clothes set on fire.

“There’s a very clear audience for people who are getting their clothes set on fire. They’re drunk adult men, not little kids,” he said.

Part of the reason why Siegert doesn’t encourage the teaching of stop, drop and roll to children is because whenever people ask kids what to do when there’s a fire in their home, their first response is not likely to be “get out” of the building, he said.

“They’re saying ‘stop, drop and roll,’ which is not going to help. So, we’ve shifted away from that completely,” Siegert said. “That’s something that all of us grew up being indoctrinated with.”

Shifting away from that message toward more pertinent messaging and letting children hear what a smoke alarm sounds like is important because, according to Siegert, many children have never heard the sound before, let alone what it means.

“The worst nightmare for everybody here is pulling a kid out of a fire. So if we can keep that from happening, that’s a win for everybody,” Siegert said.

Excelsior Fire Department member Christopher Whiteford said the association also provides important professional networking opportunities through the annual academy.

“You can connect with others you haven’t seen in a year or two and kind of talk and see how their department is doing,” Whiteford said.

Some training opportunities aren’t available at the department’s firehouse in Bellwood, so Whiteford — and several firefighters from departments in eight counties across the state — use the association’s fire academy to train every year.

“It gives us our training that we truthfully need,” Whiteford said, adding the academy facility is “very unique” and features a burn building, a tower and a flammable liquids pit among other training opportunities.

Weir said the facility is “a great resource” for local firefighters to have in the area. It is used by volunteer firefighters from as far as Pittsburgh and Lancaster and also paid fire departments, like the cities of Johnstown and Altoona.

“Those people are also benefiting from us having this training site and offering these trainings as well. It’s something that a lot of other areas don’t have to offer their firefighters,” Weir said of the academy facility, noting it familiarizes people from out of the area with businesses and things to do in the region.

“One of the goals that I have in my role is to make this weekend an event where people see the schedule and go ‘Oh hey, Cambria County is having their fire academy weekends and we need to go because it’s a great area to go to,'” Weir said.

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520.