Five of the Paso Robles Fire Department’s newest recruits headed to the former Georgia Brown school campus off of 36th and Oak streets this week, as they continued week two of the six-week training academy.
The training consists of obstacle avoidance, hose pulls and ladder carries.
The empty school campus serves as a makeshift training site, while the PRFD awaits the completion of its new training center.
Training Officer Robby Smith said the campus allows the recruits to simulate home and school fire responses.
“This site here at the old Georgia Brown Elementary allowed us to be able to conduct some training that we can’t do at our site right now,” Smith said. “We can’t do any above-ground hose lays or a lot of obstacle avoidance like we can here with all these different buildings.”
“The first week, we could barely walk,” said new firefighter recruit Keana Viss about her experience so far.
Viss started out in the wine industry before entering the fire academy, finding that they weren’t so different.
“For harvest, you work for six months with the same people. A lot of the places they housed you, so you lived and worked and ate and did pretty much everything together during harvest, and I really liked that aspect, as well as like, hard work,” Viss said.
She’s found the same sense of commitment and community among the new recruits.
“Everybody’s been really supportive. Everybody’s got each other’s backs. As recruits, we’ve been able to get together before this academy started so we got to have a good baseline coming in,” Viss said.
During the next month of training, she hopes to develop more confidence in her abilities.
“I want to be confident in that I can do anything the captain asks, and they can be confident in me knowing that I can get the job done,” Viss said.
After Viss and her four fellow recruits complete their training, they can respond to calls alongside PRFD crews.
There will not be any live fire or destructive training on the Georgia Brown campus.
The New Recruit Academy will continue through March 13.
