Jonathan Karn started his new position as Wellington County training officer on July 25 and told Centre Wellington councillors he has been busy ever since.
Karn was part of the year-end fire report presented to the committee of the whole Dec. 5.
He said he travelled at least once to all fire departments across Wellington, and has come to appreciate how big that territory is. After those first visits, he began to evaluate training needs of all the fire departments, and then established a list of training priorities.
Through that work, Karn, along with the Fire Marshall’s office, developed documentation forms that are standards for all fire departments. That allows all training to be documented and recorded the same way across the county.
He said that has streamlined training records while meeting the Ministry of Labour standards.
Karn is also developing a five year plan “to maximize training sessions for all departments, a set training schedule.”
That will cover all the Ontario firefighter curriculum. He said to date, Mount Forest, Puslinch, Mapleton and Minto Fire Departments have five year plans in place or are under development,and he expects the remaining departments will have theirs completed this month and be ready to start using them in January.
Karn said all Wellington firefighters will be enrolled for certification in the Ontario Fire Marshall’s firefighter curriculum, and at the end of five years, all 350 firefighters in Wellington County will have about 400 hours of training and be certified as firefighters in Ontario.
Karn said that will be “a huge achievement.”
He said standard lesson plans are being developed and that will ensure the same content is being taught across all county fire departments.
In the past six months, lessons plans have been developed that will be used by all stations. Each plan takes about eight hours to properly research and develop.
He said a new website is also being developed and is expected to be on line this week – to give firefighters access to lesson plans, training materials documentation and other information for station training officers.
There will also be company officer development training. Karn said he has developed a list of training officers in the county who can deliver those courses, which saves having to send volunteer firefighters to the Ontario Fire College. He said of those 40 hour courses that firefighters would otherwise have to use a week of their personal holidays for the courses, but they can now obtain the knowledge over two weekends, at home.
He added there is a need to provide “live fire” training, but there are some costs associated with that and they will have to be worked into budgets.
Karn said educational materials have in the past been purchased by local departments as needed, but now there is a database that allows those materials to be shared across the county, thus saving some money.
Karn said that shortly after starting his new position he met and began working with county emergency coordinator Linda Dickson and took a provincial incident command course.
He concluded by saying he has a 35 hour work week, but he also adds two to four hours a week working nights at various departments as needed.
Councillor Kelly Linton said it is good to see resources are being shared, because he had planned to ask how the departments can reduce costs.
