More than 1,000 firefighters throughout the region gathered Saturday at Penta Career Center to receive free hands-on training with others in their field during the annual Northwestern Ohio Volunteer Firemen’s Association Regional Fire School.
“We're proud that in northwest Ohio we put together something like this,” said Brad Gilbert, 56, of Rossford, the fire school’s public information officer.
The volunteer firefighters’ association, he said, is proud “to have the attendance, the participation, and now starting to get recognized from the rest of the state that we're doing something good here.”
The fire school, making its return after being shut down by the coronavirus pandemic’s onset two years ago, was held at Penta in Perrysburg Township for the first time.
Training had been offered in the interim via Zoom calls, said fire school chairman Jeff Orphal, 62, of Wapakoneta, Ohio, but such virtual instruction was not a long-term solution for such a “hands-on” profession.
More than 30 different classes, “from firefighting to EMS to hazmat,” were offered, with Mr. Orphal urging new volunteers just entering the field to select the more hands-on classes. Subjects were taught either in three-hour or six-hour sessions, with those taking the shorter courses able to select two for the day.
“In the fire service, the challenges that we meet are ever growing,” said Tyler King, 31, a volunteer firefighter from the western Allen County village of Spencerville, Ohio, who said it was good to “keep up to date with everything we're gonna run into.”
“Firefighting is a thing where you're always learning and you're always improving,” said Harley Ashby, 17, a Penta student from Luckey, who also participated with an eye toward obtaining his Firefighter II certification. Young Ashby said he expects to “go pretty much straight onto a fire department,” after graduating Penta.
The program moved to Penta from Bowling Green State University, where the fire school’s enrollment had grown enough that classes had to be spread out over multiple buildings. Penta offered a single large venue where everyone could be under one roof.
The program provides an important “opportunity for everyone in the area to get together and actually network, communicate, see each other, and talk,” Mr. Gilbert said.
The face-to-face communication has down-the-road benefits, he said, because when multiple fire departments are called to “disaster scenes, they recognize each other, they know how to talk to each other because they know how to talk to each other because they've been at events like this.”
First Published March 13, 2022, 1:07 a.m.
