| A screenshot from FLAME-SIM showing three firefighters in a virtual scenario |
FLAME-SIM is excited to announce the addition of Red Deer Emergency Services to the rapidly growing FLAME-SIM family! Red Deer Emergency Services (RDES), FLAME-SIM’s first international customer, is located in Alberta, Canada and serves the City of Red Deer and the surrounding region. RDES maintains a professional staff of 130 firefighting personnel who provide round-the-clock fire and EMS protection to the area residents.
Red Deer Emergency Services, led by Chief Mike Godwin, recently acquired the FLAME-SIM Rugged Mobile Center, a portable, interactive fire ground training system, that will allow Chief Godwin’s staff to repeatedly train on fire ground communications, fire ground operations, and incident command procedures in a safe, effective, and challenging virtual fire scene environment.
The addition of this new, dynamic training tool to Red Deer’s progressive fire training program comes at a crucial time in their department’s history. Due to their city’s growth and increased emergency responses, RDES is in the process of adding close to 40 new fire personnel. The addition of these new firefighters, combined with the pending loss of nearly 30 of their veteran firefighters due to retirement within the next 5 years, will make this experience-based training a vital part of their training curriculum.
Chief Godwin stated, “With these senior members leaving, we also lose an irreplaceable amount of fire experience. With FLAME-SIM, we hope to try and replace these years of experience with hours of virtual fire experience in the FLAME-SIM program.”
Red Deer Emergency Services is familiar with technology and has been using an internet-based learning management system to assist in fire and EMS training. Chief Godwin excitedly added, “With the addition of FLAME-SIM, we will now be able to increase technology-based training for all of our officers. We also hope to utilize the program in Fire Officer I and II courses for our members.”
RDES and FLAME-SIM are excited about the benefits that the FLAME-SIM interactive fire training software will provide to Red Deer, and we are anxiously looking forward to the feedback from the RDES staff, which will provide valuable information for the continued development of the FLAME-SIM program for our international and domestic agencies.