Cranberry Fire Cadet Academy sees record enrollment
CRANBERRY TWP — Lugging heavy gear in the hot summer sun, 17 young future firefighters took to training on Tuesday at the Fire Cadet Academy.
“This year we have an all-time high of 17 students,” said organizer Trent Smith. “Last year we had 10, so we’ve increased.”
Smith, who is also a member of the Cranberry Township Volunteer Fire Company, said this is the third year for the program.
“The whole point of the academy itself is to give kids who are interested in fire service a safe, controlled opportunity to learn,” he said. “And to go through some of the motions of what a firefighter would actually do on a day-to-day basis.”
Accepting students ages 14 to 18, the program runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. through Friday at the township’s expansive Public Safety Training Facility.
“They’re actually able to hone their skills in a facility that’s really state of the art — it’s really unique and, really, it doesn’t exist anywhere else — in the backyard of a firehouse,” Smith said. “You’d usually have to go to Butler County Community College or Allegheny County Fire Academy.”
The facility features an 80-student classroom building, a furnished four-story training tower piped for artificial smoke — and a Dräger Live-Fire System.
“We can actually do live fire in there,” Smith said. “So we can light it on fire basically. And since it’s just shipping containers with modifications to it, it doesn’t damage the building at all.”
While he said the students wouldn’t be participating in any live-fire exercises, the scorched building would be used throughout the five-day course.
“They are practicing moving hoses through the building and trying to overcome those obstacles — stairwells and stuff like that,” Smith said.
Twin brothers Sam and Joe Michel, juniors at Seneca Valley Senior High School, have been with the academy since its inception.
“I joined the camp sort of on a whim,” Sam said. “Mom just said, ‘Hey, this looks fun, do you want to try it?’ I said, ‘Sure, why not? It’s free.’”
The weeklong training, they agreed, inspired them to pursue firefighting as a career — with the pair becoming junior members at the Cranberry Township Volunteer Fire Company within the year.
“I just enjoy it, I guess; it’s like a second family,” Joe said. “You make a lot of friends, you have fun, because it’s not all going to fires and being the hero.”
Sam agreed, saying firefighting is about “working together.”
“There are no heroes on the fire ground. There are firefighters, but there are no heroes because we all work together,” he said. “You share the heroism.”
Emma Willis, a sophomore at Seneca Valley, said this year was her first experience in firefighting.
“My mom put me in this, and I told her that I didn’t want to go and I wasn’t going to like it,” Emma said. “But it turns out that I really liked it, and I kind of want to join and be a junior, you know?”
Cheyenne Smith, a sophomore at Riverside High School in Beaver County, said this is her second year in the program.
“Last year was really challenging for me, and I faced a lot of obstacles with all of it,” Cheyenne said. “I don’t really have an interest in being a firefighter, but this year I wanted to come back and face my fears.”
Despite seeking a career elsewhere, Cheyenne said she still is interested in becoming a junior firefighter and hopes to include it on her college applications.
“I’m more interested in being a police officer or a Marine than a firefighter, but this is an all-over great experience,” she said. “I can’t wait to do it next year.”
Smith said participants are welcome in the academy at any experience level for a week of training analogous to many professional certifications.
“Yesterday was our introduction; today is engine-company operations,” Smith said Tuesday. “Tomorrow will be CPR and first aid, and they’ll actually be certified through the Independence Health System.”
Wednesday’s emergency assistance training will be conducted by Cranberry Township EMS.
“Thursday is truck-company operations,” Smith said. “So, search and rescue and things like that, forcible entry.”
The week will culminate in a live-fire demonstration by Butler County Community College, a program on rescue-company operations and, finally, a demonstration by students for family members.
“So they’ll get to watch them actually put everything they learned this week together and put it to use in a simulation,” Smith said.
As of Tuesday, though, he said the training was heavily focused on one of the fundamentals of firefighting.
“One of the most important things we’re really drilling with them is hose lines,” Smith said. “Obviously, you can’t put a fire out if you don’t know how to get the hose there in the first place.”
While the academy is adapted for beginning firefighters, he said the training was rigorous enough to attract junior firefighters in the region.
“We also wanted it to be something for those juniors who are already involved so they can really practice their skills,” Smith said. “Not every fire company has the means to be able to put on something like this, especially for a week straight.”
