A demonstration by the chief training officer of the Interlakes Volunteer Fire Department (IVFD) was a fiery highlight of the open house held Saturday, April 19 at the Interlakes Community Centre.
Kerry Exner, the IVFD's chief training officer, said the demonstration was to show the public why it is a terrible idea to put water into a hot oil fire. Exner repeated the explosive demonstration twice during the open house.
"The water itself, even though it's been very small - it's probably about only two ounces of water. But when it hits the boiling oil, it turns to steam and it goes anywhere from 1,200 to up to 3,500 times its size," Exner said, explaining why dousing a grease fire results in an explosion of fire. "In case the water is heavier than the oil, it goes to the bottom when it expands and blows all that oil out of the pot and all over the room."
In addition to his demonstration, Exner also had a model of all the fire hazards a house can have inside the Interlakes Community Centre, where it was set right next to several other booths staffed by members of the Deka Lake Volunteer Fire Department, South Cariboo Search and Rescue and the Cariboo Regional District (CRD), which helps oversee the IVFD.
Exner has been with the fire department for two years, which has three fire halls in the Interlakes area. IVFD Fire Chief Poul Beer said the fire protection area his department covers is the largest in all of the CRD.
"We cover about a 55 kilometre stretch of Highway 24. (We have) just over 40 members and we have fire protection to the area, as well as a first responder program," Beer said.
The IVFD's three fire halls are located at Sheridan Lake, east of the Interlakes Community Centre and at Lac des Roches.
The fire department's equipment includes an engine as well as a new tender they have at hall one, as well as an engine and tender in hall two, and two engines at hall three, as well as others.
"We've actually just picked up our spare engine last month. So now we have two engines, a tender and our squad pickup truck that we use for our first responder calls," said Beer.
Beer noted in addition to the new spare engine, the IVFD is preparing to make a serious change to how they operate. The department will be switching to a paid-on-call model in May rather than on a volunteer basis, as they have since the department's founding.
"As of next month, as of May, we are switching to a paid, on-call model, where members are getting paid an hourly wage for responding to incidents instead of just being volunteer and we are actually also going to a multi-response zone model, where for lower priority calls, we're not necessarily sending out all halls for a lower priority call," Beer explained. "We're making it so that a single hall or two halls can respond to calls."
Eugene Gerwing is one of the members of the IVFD, and is the captain of the Sheridan Lake fire hall, otherwise known as Hall One. He joined the IVFD around seven years ago and remarked that it feels great to be a part of it.
"We maybe do 100 calls in a year, and most of these calls are medical calls," Gerwing said. "There's a good group of people here. So even though you're meeting at two in the morning, and the people aren't at their best, everybody seems to be OK with showing up and doing their thing."
Gerwing said the IVFD usually practices on Tuesday nights from around 6:30 to 9 p.m., where they go through various situations.
"Whether it's a structure fire, a wildland fire, which we're getting more involved in every year now, and so that's the majority of what you need to do. And then there's training outside of that," Gerwing noted.
This training is done through the College of the Rockies, with members of the IVFD writing an exam every month.
"To write the exam, you probably have to do three to four hours of reading," Gerwing stated. "So there's a little bit more of the training, a little bit more of the school atmosphere, but we're still fighting fire - simulated fighting fires when we do our practices, so that's where we get most of our experience."
Gerwing encourages people to sign up for the IVFD, as long as they are physically fit to do so.
