your area for a two-day school at a convenient time. And we do not charge any fee for delivering any of these courses. The classes we see delivered in a typical two-day regional fire school are all of the Live Fire Training classes and any of the four-, eight-, or 16-hour classes we provide at our annual winter fire school. The classes are taught by our in-state instructors. The program manager in your area can help you schedule classes and tell you what UFRA can do. Nowhere else in this country provides this kind of training to small communities—especially at no cost. Regional schools have some very distinct advantages over state-wide schools. They make it possible to deliver classes to areas where it simply is not cost effective to do it for individual departments. The Utah State Fire Prevention Board, which has oversight of UFRA, requires a minimum number of students for every class—12 students minimum for populations of 10,000 or more and eight students minimum for populations of less than 10,000. However, even with no fees and the lower student requirement in less populated areas, some departments have trouble getting the required number of students. With regional deliveries, more than one department within a geographical area can combine to attain the required number of students.
If you are interested in having a regional fire school in your area, please contact the training program manager assigned to your county. He will guide you through the process and make sure you understand what UFRA can do to help the firefighters in your community be better and safer when you need them the most. Instructors at regional fire schools teach classes similar to the ones offered at annual winter fire schools. Here, at the Duchesne Regional Fire School in May 2017, firefighters learn about forcible entry tools and techniques during the Forcible Entry course.
There are a few requirements UFRA needs fulfilled to bring a regional school to your area: 1. The area must have a place to lodge and feed the instructors within a reasonable distance. 2. There must be classrooms available for classes. 3. There must be suitable areas for props to be set up and delivered. 4. There must be restroom facilities for the students and instructors. Some classes also require the hosting agency or participants to provide certain resources (e.g., cars for the vehicle extrication class or personal PPE, helmet, gloves, and eye protection). Regional fire schools have been the best thing to happen to the fire departments in Utah. What could be better than free training brought to your own backyard and taught by the best instructors in the state?
photography by Russell Young
Summer 2017 | 3