Cadet Camp in the Books

I wasn't really prepared for how much work it would be to organize Cadet Camp. Every year Hornby Island Fire Rescue puts on a 2 day camp for kids aged 10 -14 where we teach first aid and fire safety skills. It's pretty exciting stuff involving almost exclusively "hands on" training.

We light up a big burn pit with diesel oil and the kids put it out with extinguishers. They cut apart a car with our hydraulic cutters and spreaders. For an afternoon we take the trucks up to the school parking lot and they can advance and discharge an actual 1 1/2 inch attack line.

Rachelle and Jules volunteer to look after all of the food for the two days and spend long hours cooking and cleaning up after the kids. The lunches are super gourmet. Check this out. Mac and cheese, but with real Italian pasta and home made cheese sauce made with old cheddar. Oh ya, she puts in chunks of ham, too. There was not a scrap left on any of the kid's plates.

The whole thing wrapped up with a firefighter challenge event. We smoked up one of the truck bays with theatrical smoke and the kids had to find their way out and rescue the baby that we had hidden in the room. Once out of the bay, they grabbed a charged hoseline, advanced it 25' and had to knock over a traffic cone with the hose stream. They, then, had to drag a heavy dummy back to the finish line.

It's a really important event for our department and for the community. The skills learned at this camp will save a house, save a life, or get a kid hooked on firefighting or EMS.

The kids are all great and it was fabulous fun, but I'm still recovering. I don't get very much practice dealing with kids OR organizing for that matter.