Fire instructor course for George and Knysna

GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - George and Knysna's fire departments joined forces to present a fire instructor course to the fire services staff in the Garden Route.

The training took place during September and October and consisted of a hybrid course with face-to-face and home-based training.

A City of Cape Town Fire and Rescue Training Academy assessor did the final assessment, which was concluded on 10 and 11 November.

"Professional firefighting training is a very specialised training and because of that, the places that can present accredited training are few and far between," says Santa Sternsdorf, training station commander at the George fire station.

"Until now firefighter training required us to send staff to Cape Town or other provinces to obtain this IFSAC-accredited training"

"With the City of Cape Town Fire and Rescue Training Academy, obtaining their IFSAC accreditation, they are now willing to assess and accredit the training that we can present ourselves. This allows us as 'smaller' municipalities to train our staff, and in doing so we can reduce the cost of training and ensure a high level of quality training for our staff," said Sternsdorf.

Western Cape Province Disaster Management Fire and Rescue has contributed capacity-building grants that will assist the training with resources and costs of assessments. The training is part of a strategic process to increase the training capabilities of the "smaller" fire services in the Southern Cape.

This training will, according to Sternsdorf, increase the training capacity of the fire services in the area. "Through collaboration with other municipalities, we can present the training to each municipality's fire service requires locally." The Fire Instructor 1 course was attended by George, Knysna, Bitou, Mossel Bay and Hessequa municipalities.

Firefighters from across the district participated in the course.