Members from the 150 Mile House Volunteer Fire Department, Wildwood Volunteer Fire Department and Williams Lake Fire Department will be able to further their training thanks to the efforts of Lake City Secondary School’s Youth Explore Trades students.
The class, led by teacher Andrew Hutchinson, built six dollhouse training aids over one month recently as part of the carpentry portion of the program for the local fire departments who will use the structures to assist with training exercises.
“This is great. It’s just a great partnership,” said WLFD Deputy Fire Chief Joan Flaspohler, who provided the plans for the project. “Ultimately our entities, Wildwood, 150 Mile, Williams Lake, are volunteers so for us to get that community support and those capabilities to train, that’s awesome.”
Flaspohler noted with the dollhouses they are able to simulate different fires in different rooms of the structures to show how fire will move and how it reacts in certain situations.
Hutchinson said the project was a win-win, with the students having something of importance to work on.
“I’m always looking for things we can do out there in the community,” he said.
“I think the kids got a lot out of it … and maybe one day now they’ll think of becoming a firefighter after this which would be awesome because they do so much for our community.”
Wildwood Fire Chief Brad Elliot said he’s really excited to train with the newly donated structures.
“We’ve always wanted to do one of these burn houses but with our limited resources and the time it takes to build one, we haven’t been able to so we’re really excited to have one built for us. We look forward to using it.”
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