LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Class is in session on Tuesday for the latest batch of Anchorage Middletown Fire & EMS recruits. At a home slated for demolition, they learned breaching techniques — shattering glass, sawing off the security bars, sledgehammering the brick down to the foundation. Making a door out of a window, as one instructor put it.
"After the fire's out, you're pulling ceilings to make sure there's no rekindle," green hat recruit Cameron Croney explained, who is covered in insulation after learning the on-the-job lesson and had just used a hook saw to pull down the vacant home's ceiling.
It's a dream job for Croney, who is 18 years old and fresh out of high school.
"I got the physical ability; I got most of what I needed to actually apply in high school, I did the interview in high school," he said.
So did Brandon Smith, who saw the lesson on ventilating a home during a fire from above and packing up the chainsaw to cut through the roof. Months after graduation, he's grateful for the teacher who got him here, Dan Shirley.
"At Fairdale, he gave me the basics of what you should expect and from there, I'm just learning here with these instructors who're telling me how to become better," Smith said.
Over at the school's practice building, making mistakes is part of the learning process. Teaching the fire science program, Shirley knows firefighting takes a broad skillset.
"Because, as a firefighter, when I came up through, you had to know how to do a little bit of everything; I teach them how to build, how to change a tire, how to check the oil on a car," he said. "Putting your hands on it, and physically doing it, I just think that's the best way to learn it."
Even for students like Joshuah Mouser, the son of an assistant fire chief in Fairdale, the high school academy helped him pick his path.
"I've always been interested in it, but I really started getting interested when I came here freshman year," Mouser said.
For all three young men, it's a choice made knowing they can one day save lives.
"When people are having their worst day, they call upon you," Croney said.
Chief Kevin Tyler of Anchorage Middletown Fire and EMS said the fire science academies at Fairdale and Fern Creek High Schools set those would-be firefighters apart from other recruits.
"Look at what they offer in the trades. 'Cause the trades are a great way to make a great living," Tyler said of Jefferson County Public Schools.
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