CENTRE WELLINGTON – The County of Wellington has been designated as a regional fire training centre by the Ontario government.
The province recently announced plans to close the Ontario Fire College in Gravenhurst by the end of April, along with plans to create regional training centres in locations around the province.
Wellington County fire training officer Charles Hamilton confirmed in a March 16 tweet that Wellington County’s application to operate one of the centres had been accepted.
Hamilton explained in an interview the change won’t be drastic, as some training was already being offered on a county-wide basis.
“Prior to getting this we were kind of a quasi-regional training centre anyway, with our collective recruit training program,” he told the Advertiser.
“So it’s just an evolution. With the college closing, it kind of shuts the door on our ability to send people away to get training anyway. So we’ll now just do that locally in the county.”
Hamilton said the establishment of a regional training operation won’t be expensive.
“Really there’s no additional cost to the county. It’s not about building a bricks and mortar training facility anyway.
“We will use existing facilities, just like we do with the recruit training program.”
Hamilton explained it will probably be another year “before we see any courses being offered” and he is currently working with the Ontario Fire Marshal’s office to plan courses to be offered here in 2022 and 2023.
Some expansion of training offered locally was already in the works before the decision to close the fire college was announced, Hamilton noted.
“If COVID wasn’t happening … we’d be doing individual courses right now. We’d be doing regional training in terms of certifying our officers,” he said, adding “COVID kind of washed that out on us.”
While the primary focus going forward will be training firefighters from Wellington County, Hamilton said the courses will be open to firefighters from elsewhere in the province.
“As part of signing up for this, we have our courses open to others in Ontario. It’s up to them if they wish to travel,” he stated.
However, Hamilton pointed out the courses won’t be offered in week-long programs like they were at the fire college.
Instead, they will be scheduled in the most convenient fashion for local trainees.
“All of our firefighters, or the majority of them, they’ve got full-time jobs and they work during the day,” he explained.
“Our training will either be on weekends … or could be evenings, like a Tuesday evening, for a month and a half.”
While there are advantages to local training opportunities, Hamilton said some aspects of the fire college program will be missed.
“I’m a little sad to see the college go away because there were courses there that they couldn’t really offer anywhere else – more to do with fire investigations, fire systems – they had some labs up there that were very unique in terms of the training that would be offered,” he stated.
“But the other stuff, I think we could do locally and possibly be as cost effective as possible.”
While noting, “Going to a college for a week is a hardship for some,” Hamilton pointed out, “It’s not just the course you’re taking, it’s the connections you’re making with other firefighters there.
“You get a really kind of mixed picture of how they see things and then their experiences are different and they kind of open your eyes to how other people see things in fire service. So we’ll kind of miss that.”
However it’s offered, Hamilton said proper training is essential for any fire service.
“The expectation is that we’re a service and if you’re in need you’re not expecting someone that’s inexperienced, untrained or unprepared to show up and deal with whatever has going wrong that day,” he said.
“You’re expecting people to jump off the truck and be able to do what needs to be done, whether it’s saving your life, saving your business or mitigating … an environmental concern.”
He added, “There’s an expectation in the public; they pay their taxes, they want to see that the fire service is providing a professional level service.
“Whether it’s here in Centre Wellington, or in Mississauga, the expectation is no different. So we need to train to the same level of expertise as any fire fighter in Ontario.”
