Ask Rob Lamoureux how Fire Ops 101 went, and he can't get the adjectives out fast enough.
"I'm ecstatic, over the moon," said Lamoureux, the Burnaby Firefighters Local 323 president who helped organize the Burnaby contingent for the firefighting clinic in Vancouver. "This exceeded all our expectations. ... It was a great day and something we may look at doing again in the future."
For the 40-plus participants who gave up their afternoon of comfort to endure just a fraction of what firefighters go through, it was an exhilarating and eye-opening experience.
"What a great, great experience," said New Westminster Coun. Jaimie McEvoy. "It was a lot of hard work, and it gave me a greater appreciation of the work our firefighters do."
Like most participants, McEvoy's favourite part of the afternoon was going into the burning tower and putting out the fire.
"Going up the stairs, completely blind and then putting out the fire, I got a bit of a rush," said McEvoy. "It was hard, but it felt great."
New Westminster city manager Paul Daminato was also happy to have completed all the afternoon's tasks.
"I learned a lot," he said. "There were definitely a lot of technical aspects that I didn't know about until I got in there. ... I found it physically daunting, and you really need to be in good shape to do this job."
Daminato said he had used the hydraulic spreaders before in a previous emergency preparedness demonstration, but this was the first time he'd fought an actual fire.
"Dragging the hose up the stairs and around the stairs was hard," he said. "And then when you're dragging the body, it's heavy, it's dark, it's smoky, and you have stairs."
Burnaby-Edmonds MLA Raj Chouhan learned the hard way how hard the job is.
"I'm at the front of my hose, and I'm supposed to put out the fire," Chouhan said of his tower fire experience. "I wasn't expecting the water to have that much of a kick so when the water came on, I fell backwards because of the pressure. ... I wasn't expecting that, but I got back up and started getting the water on the fire."
Burnaby Coun. Nick Volkow had his challenges with entering the burning building, but he also gained a bigger appreciation for the work of all firefighters.
"I don't think what we did was even 10 per cent of what firefighters do on a day-to-day basis," said Volkow. "I learned so much, and we were only doing a small part of what they were doing.
"I think for me, seeing how important training is to firefighters is important because things are changing so fast, and they have to enter into situations like that all the time," said Volkow.
If there's one thing all of the 40-plus participants agreed on, it was how valuable each of the eight team's wranglers, or team leaders, were.
"We couldn't have done it without our wrangler," said McEvoy of Larry Nicholl, who led Team H.
"He really calmed us all down," said Volkow of Team E wrangler Kris Anderson.
"Chris was great," said Chouhan and Daminato of their wrangler, Chris Bowcock.
After all of the hard work was done, a party at Mahony & Sons in downtown Vancouver had all the participants reflecting on how valuable the experience was for all concerned.
"Kris told us about how important teamwork and training were at the beginning, and that was so true," said Volkow. "You have to work together, and you have to always be learning new things."
"I'm so happy I did this," said Chouhan, who was joking with and gently chiding NDP colleague John Horgan, who had signed up to participate but pulled out because of an injury.
"You guys definitely earned your keep today," said Lamoureux. "Thanks for doing this and seeing what the job is about."
And if it's any consolation to all of the participants in Fire Ops 101, they're all in esteemed company now because five years ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper went through a similar program in Toronto. Shortly thereafter, he announced $2.5 million in training funds for fire halls.
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