Student volunteers begin firefighter training

The Commerce Fire Department gained 12 new recruits for a program designed to help supplement the department while preparing A&M-Commerce students and Commerce residents for a lifetime of public service.

"This is a co-operative effort between the fire department, the city, and the university," CFD Chief Brian McNevin said. "We wrote a grant to the federal government, the department of homeland security, called S.A.F.E.R grant; staffing for active fire and emergency response. It is meant to recruit and train volunteer firefighters, and that is a four year program."

The course teaches the volunteers from a curriculum the International Fire Service Training Association developed at Oklahoma State University.

"We will be doing some burns in the springtime but the first couple of months will be pretty mundane," Commerce native and Colleyville fire Captain Tim Folden said. "We will be doing some things like SCBA, donning and doffing, some basic hose roll stuff, ladder climbing and that will be the only physical stuff we do. The ‘cool' stuff will be in the springtime.

Folden also said program instructors hope to cooperate with A&M-Commerce in some of their training exercises.

"We'll do some forcible entry training and hopefully the university will let us use some of the buildings they are about to tear down," he said. "That would be a great opportunity for these guys because that is something a lot of actual fire academies don't do. We will be doing some repelling work in here and also scout out some taller structures around town."

The grant, awarded to CFD in April, was meant to increase the staffing in their department and added $50,000 a year to their budget.

"The main purpose was to increase our available daily staffing, because it was pretty horrendous," McNevin said. "We would have four guys on duty and that may be all we have. We didn't know if we had any volunteers, so I said we have got to go a different direction, we need to get stability fast."

Folden, who is teaching the course, said that he thinks the volunteers are very motivated and real "go-getters".

"I am going to be a firefighter paramedic and I have gone through an EMT course and then moved up here for college," sophomore Austin Ryer said. "I wanted to get through college first but I heard about this course and got in. That will be the tough part, mixing school in the mornings and then this at night; but, it's gaining experience while I'm going to school, which is pretty cool. I'm excited about it."