By Adam Ophus

Protecting the protectors

Conference dedicated to protecting our firefighters

Oct 29, 2019 | 4:35 PM

Clearwater Regional Fire Rescue Services had a busy time this past weekend with winter hitting the area hard.

“I think it started Thursday last week and our guys have basically been busy beyond what you saw on social media. We were too busy to even get them all posted,” proclaimed Deputy Fire Chief Shawn St. Peter.

“It was like a long weekend for us in the amount of calls we received, which varied all over the place from motor vehicle incidents, several medical calls, we had a vehicle fire, a house fire, it was a very busy weekend across the county for all of our guys.”

The calls continue to pour in for the CRFRS with the cold snap Clearwater County has been in.

This coming weekend looks to be very busy in a different way with the third annual Protecting Our Professionals Conference in Rocky Mountain House.

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“The biggest thing behind why we started it as a regional conference was because the cost of trying to send our people awa,y whether it’s in Indianapolis or some of the larger international conferences, or whether it’s in the province to maybe Lethbridge or northern Alberta, the cost was quite high,” St. Peter explained.

He went on to say that since the change, they are now able to get more of their firefighters involved along with some of their neighbouring partners.

The conference this year will be focusing on cancer and cancer prevention for firefighters.

“There’s some hands on training going on Friday with firefighter survival techniques, and we have a host of speakers coming from an L.A. fire department and all around North America to speak with our people, so it’s a high caliber conference,” St. Peter described.

The conference will be made free for all CRFRS volunteers. It has also been opened up to other Clearwater County departments because of the high level of leadership training being featured.

“It’s not necessarily just firefighting, it’s firefighting focused, but some of it is just leadership skills in general, so there could be some interest in the general business community,” St. Peter said.

The third annual Protecting Our Professionals Conference will be taking place November 1-3 at the Lou Soppit Community Centre, with tickets available through Eventbrite.