Feeling the heat: Firefighting recruits on P.E.I. put to the test in live fire scenarios

Stephen Brun · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 27, 2025 4:38 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

A caller harvest of recruits got their archetypal sensation of what it's similar to combat fires, albeit controlled ones, arsenic they completed the archetypal level of their grooming successful P.E.I. connected Sunday. 

Around 55 students from crossed the state took portion successful their last time of applicable tract grooming astatine the P.E.I. Fire School successful Charlottetown. 

The occurrence and fume billowing retired of a makeshift gathering connected the school's grounds were precise real, but the recruits said they felt harmless with the cognition they learned from their instructors. 

"It's truly unthinkable to spot what you tin propulsion your assemblage to do, what you tin bash mentally erstwhile you're successful there, antithetic ways that you tin benignant of power what's going on," said Tessa Rogers, a caller enlistee to the Charlottetown Fire Department. 

"I thought beforehand that I would bash good successful a relation similar this, nevertheless reasoning and knowing are 2 precise antithetic things, truthful erstwhile you really acquisition it, it's truly validating to know, ohio hey I tin bash this and I bash bask it, and it is meaningful." 

To hole for their Level 1 certification, recruits walk 19 sessions learning the ropes successful a schoolroom from January to March. 

Then it's 3 weekends of tract exercises, culminating successful unrecorded occurrence scenarios connected the last day. 

Wooden pallets and straw are burned to make fires connected the crushed floor, stairwell and basement of the structure. 

"It's sufficiently rigorous. The students and instructors volition acquisition vigor and steam and smoke," said Kevin MacPhail, 1 of the lawman chiefs astatine the occurrence school. 

"There is ever caller probe being done successful materials which are burning, truthful the occurrence work is having to accommodate and incorporated immoderate of that caller accusation into the lessons." 

MacPhail said the instauration of much electrical conveyance chargers successful people's homes, combined with much synthetic, petroleum-based gathering materials and paints each make caller challenges for firefighters. 

But with their occurrence schoolhouse instruction, this year's students felt good prepared. 

Some, similar Charlottetown section enlistee Niloofar Seifi Hesar, adjacent recovered the grooming to beryllium fun. 

"Everything is nether power here. You person each your bunker gear, you'll beryllium safe, instructors are with you if you panic," she said. 

"I've done truthful galore antithetic things successful life, but this is by acold the funnest happening that I've done." 

Fun mightiness not beryllium the connection everyone would usage to picture loading up with dense cogwheel and moving into a burning gathering with small to nary visibility.

But determination are deeper reasons that gully radical similar Rogers into firefighting. 

"It's conscionable a large mode to springiness backmost to your community, beryllium portion of the community," she said. "If you're idiosyncratic who likes adrenalin and a small spot of … controlled chaos, it's large for that."