New firefighters join the ranks at South King Fire

Joining the ranks of South King Fire are 11 new firefighters who will find out their official assignments on Aug. 9. Two lateral hires will also hit the streets with them.

For now, they are completing post-academy training, giving them the opportunity to practice their critical thinking and get some extra hands-on practice for real-life scenarios.

As just one example, the probationary firefighters practice responding to a scenario where a car has been driven into a building. To make it extra challenging, the scenario was set up with a car parked next to the crashed vehicle and a gas main on the other side.

“The academy is really black and white, but reality is gray,” said Brian Jack, who runs the post-academy training and was recently named the driver-engineer of the year for South King Fire. “This gives them the chance to practice with those gray areas in a safe environment.”

In the past, soon-to-be South King Fire hires went through a third-party academy. The department then formed a training consortium with other local fire districts and has standardized training, building that standardization into the academy itself.

This means that when they graduate from the academy, probationary firefighters can now focus on these practical scenarios and working on their problem solving and critical thinking more, rather than having to spend the majority of that time learning how their assigned department does things.

One thing that’s also changed over the years is the sheer call volume received by South King Fire. The fire department has seen a 54% increase in 10 years, and it is looking likely that the department will have over 25,000 calls this year, according to Capt. Brad Chaney.

The department has had a steady pace of new firefighters over the past few years to replace those who have retired, but this group is about twice as large as their post-academy group in recent years, Chaney said.

South King Fire also has a three-year apprenticeship program through the Joint Apprenticeship Training Council (JATC). Throughout these next three years, the new firefighters will continue to do assignments and extra training to support their development.

Drew Templeman transferred from a small department in Wyoming and said the South King Fire department is three times the size of his last one. Templeman said his time in post-academy has been focused on learning the South King Fire way of doing things. As just one example, he said when doing a drill with hand lines, his department did completely different patterns, but that the other firefighters “got me up to speed.”

“On my first day, I was like, I guess I don’t know how to throw a ladder!” added Tanner Brotherton, a lateral transfer from North Whatcom.

Kimber Thomas is a graduate of the academy and said she has enjoyed the opportunity to be creative and a free thinker in the post-academy training. Thomas said she was drawn to the career after experiencing multiple family emergencies that required the response of fire services. Thomas said she’s also always had a desire to serve others, so getting to do that, and “also get to do the cool stuff,” seemed like the ideal job.

Within the academy she said it was very regimented, which she appreciated because it ensures that everyone has the same foundational knowledge.

Now that she’s getting to experience the work first-hand even in a test scenario, she said that everything she had to verbalize in academy “has become muscle memory. Even though I’m not saying it out loud, I’m saying the steps in my head as I do them.”

To her, everything is “new and exciting.”

11 new firefighters and 2 lateral transfers will be out in the community ready to offer their support and services soon. Photos by Keelin Everly-Lang / The Mirror

Probationary firefighters practice a scenario on the third floor of a training tower as part of their post-academy training. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / The Mirror