What does it take to make the grade in the Burnaby Fire Department? Burnaby NOW reporter Cayley Dobie sat down with two Burnaby training officers, two of the department’s 2014 recruits and the director of the fire and safety division at the Justice Institute of B.C. to find out what all the fuss was about the Burnaby Fire Department. In this, the fourth instalment of her series, she talks with Darcy O’Riordan, a trainer.
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Meet Lieutenant Darcy O’Riordan – he is the training officer for the 2014 fire recruit program. He has worked with the department for years, but this year is the first time he’s ever been in charge of his own recruit group and needless to say it’s been an exciting ride.
From day one, O’Riordan says the recruits have been great – motivated, excited and eager to learn.
With graduation complete, O’Riordan says he’s keen to see how the seven new recruits will do in their first placement with the department.
While, it’s unclear whether or not O’Riordan will be the training officer for next year’s batch of recruits, he says he would be more than happy to take on the responsibility again, especially after such a positive nine-week session this year.
The Burnaby NOW recently sat down with O’Riordan to talk about his first training experience and what he thinks about the newest Burnaby firefighters.
Cayley Dobie: How was your first training experience?
Darcy O’Riordan: Myself and Captain Samson have kind of been doing a trade-off thing because he did the group last year, so that’s been great for me – the mentorship he’s shown me and the different things we’ve worked on as far as putting together a really quality training program for them. A lot of that is what the people before us have done, like Chief (Tim) Hannah, who is retired, and Chief (Steve) Howes, who is about to retire, they put together this program so we just put our little personal touches on it, but generally, went through what they did and worked together to make that happen.
CD:What do you think of the recruits this year?
DO: What do I think of them? They’re a real nice bunch of guys, and I think they’ll be a really good fit for the department. They’re team players, they’ve really gelled as a group over the last nine weeks.
They’ve come a long way from day one. First of all, the first thing we spoke to them about was the core values of the Burnaby Fire Department – trust, respect, integrity and teamwork – so we laid that out for them right away. From that point, we worked on all sorts of different skill sets as far as things within the fire hall and, of course, fire ground operations themselves. We taught them everything from hose work to firefighter rescue. … We did the rescue, the RIT (rapid intervention team) stuff out at the house (in Burnaby), and then we went to the live fire the last week for three-and-a-half days and all their skills came together. Everything we taught them over the last nine weeks, it really went well.
CD:How important is it to pass on the core values of Burnaby fire?
DO:I think they’re very important. What happened with that was we started, the entire department, last year we did a survey with 10 or 12 core values and asked them to rank them from one to five what the most important values that they thought were to be a Burnaby firefighter, so what is the key essence to being a Burnaby firefighter and then we added up all the survey results and that’s what we came up with. Trust was number one, respect was two, integrity, teamwork and then the fifth was professionalism.
CD:What’s it been like working with these recruits?
DO:It’s been so much fun working with these guys. They’re so excited to come to work everyday; they’re giving it everything they have, 110 per cent everyday. So we’ve really had a lot of fun, we’ve learned a lot of things. I’ve learned a lot just from being involved with them. It’s a passion, firefighting. I always says it’s from the heart and all these guys have it from the heart.
CD:What’s been the most rewarding moment?
DO:The first day we all kind of give them a piece of advice, and what I said was one of the things the chief said to me years ago, “Enjoy this career and do everything you can for it because it will give back a lot to you,” and that’s what I’m feeling right now. I’m feeling really good and we always say, “Leave it better than you found it.” So try to improve over your career and make it better than it was when you got here.
CD: Would you do it again?
DO:I’d like to. It depends, just the way it works with shifts and what not, who ends up in here, but ya, I would certainly do it again.
