Baltimore firefighters get special training to better handle wildfires
By Jennifer Franciotti
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BALTIMORE (WBAL) — OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Baltimore County firefighters are getting training this week from national and international instructors on how to better handle wildfires.
It’s an opportunity that came out of lessons learned from the massive wildfire three years ago in Owings Mills.
“When we got there, we had fire that was rapidly expanding exposures to houses that we were really concerned about,” said Edmund Schwartz Jr., a battalion chief with the Baltimore County Fire Department.
It was April 2023 when more than 700 acres burned in a brushfire at Soldiers Delight in Owings Mills. An eight-alarm fire was Baltimore County’s biggest wildland fire in more than 60 years, and because of the challenges that arose during that incident, it is why Baltimore County firefighters are in the classroom this week.
“To not only protect firefighters and save their lives, but to protect the community that they serve,” Lt. J.P. Adams, with the Lewiston Fire Department in Maine, said during the training.
“We’re seeing more wildfires in areas that are not trained to cover it, so we have structural firefighters used to going into buildings fighting fire with a gear that we’ve always used and trained with, and this is a different environment,” said Steve Redmer, president of the Baltimore County Professional Firefighters Association.
At Stevenson University’s Greenspring campus, 25 Baltimore County firefighters are taking part in a 10-hour course taught by instructors from the International Association of Firefighters. They are learning communication and tactical strategies in the classroom and in the field.
“Moving from house to house for being tactical, we call a tactical agility,” Adams said during the training session.
“A lot of it has been how to move quickly, prepare a fire apparatus more efficiently to protect multiple dwelling at one time,” Schwartz said.
The course is funded by the National Fire Academy, and every participant is being trained as an instructor who will now go back to their firehouses to teach 1,100 other members of the department.
“Having them be able to take this training and go out and train the rest of the department is now a force multiplier for us, and that we can really get ready for these events and really hammered down on what needs to be done,” Schwartz said.
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