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Bringing the fire truck to the students

Bringing the fire truck to the students

Everything on the device shines fire-engine red and chrome. The pumps, gauges and hose fixtures seem real enough.

It’s like having a real fire engine in the classroom – except better in many aspects.

Coconino Community College now has the ability to offer new training to Fire Science students and continuing training to firefighters in the field on how to operate the water pumps on a fire engine. The college purchased a PumpOps Simulator entirely with the help of grant funding from the federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act.

“This simulator provides a very realistic experience in a college classroom that normally requires a live fire truck,” said Marc Goldberg, Fire Science program coordinator at CCC. “We can’t get the students on the fire trucks adequately to learn these skills … Students are better trained from day one.”

Goldberg added that before getting the simulator, pump training required a department fire truck to be available, which is a logistical difficulty as fire crews respond to calls in northern Arizona on a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week basis. Also, there was also the wasting of hundreds of gallons of water and the possibility of a student accidentally burning out a pump, which is a costly mistake for a $700,000 fire engine.

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By LARRY HENDRICKS Special to the Sun, Arizona Daily Sun,  Feb 2, 2019