National First Responders Day is Monday and several men and women are working around the clock to keep our region safe.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – National First Responders Day is Monday and several men and women are working around the clock to keep our region safe.
Monday is National First Responders Day, recognizing the heroic men and women across several fields, that dedicate their lives to helping others, and the ones that hope to fill those shoes.
“I wanna be of self-service and I think I fill that in every other aspect of my life so why not just make a career out of that this will be one of the highest levels of being a service provider for my community,” says Firefighter recruit Yashiyah St. Phard.
Recruits were busy learning how to do flat raises with 24 and 28-foot ladders, as well as rotating between different stations set up with hose pulls. Active firefighters are coming in on their days off to train these recruits.
Assistant Coordinator for the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy Peter Jerusik told 22News, “24-foot ladder or smaller–we do teach them how to throw with one person, 24 feet to 28 feet is two people, a 35-foot ladder takes three people, and then when we do the 45-foot pole ladder that actually takes five people to throw.”
“The fire service in the last 40 years we’ve gone from say three or four people on an engine company to some communities where it’s only three and some communities it’s only one or two,” says Jerusik. “That can definitely affect the time to get a hose line in place because of the weight on it.”
26 recruits are in their first week of training and hoping to pursue a career in firefighting and serve the community they call home. Six weeks before their first week of training they were told what it takes to enter this field, and in just 10 short weeks they’ll graduate and head to departments across western Massachusetts.
Jerusik adds, “I think a lot of people don’t realize the mental toughness that it takes because a lot of decisions you have to make are split second.”
“It is all about mentally putting yourself about what’s emotionally in front of you whether that can be physically, emotionally–you have to rise above,” says recruit Yashiyah St. Phard.
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