Dave Russon Memorial Fire Explorer Emergency Exercise

On Saturday May 20th members of Explorer Post 100 and Explorer Post 89 participated in an annual multi-agency drill including explorer posts from Los Angeles County, Compton, West Covina, Glendale and many others. The drill took place at the Del Valle training center north of magic mountain. These motivated young men & women worked hard all day long in return receiving priceless training on wildland fire fighting, auto extrication, Haz Mat, Urban Search and Rescue, and even live-fire training.

Each explorer post brought their own engine which the explorers staffed, with a certified firefighter driver of course. All apparatus were staged at a base camp, and once the event kicked off, the companies were dispatched to one of the above incidents. Once on-scene, the company received an introduction and lesson on a certain aspect of the fire service. After their lecture, the perspective company was faced with a related task whether it be repelling down to a vehicle over the side or cutting a fire line.

At the end of the day, the explorers conveyed to me how much knowledge and experience they gained from all of the instructors. One explorer even told me that he didn't really realize that there were so many more aspects to the fire service other than structure fires and of course ems.

A special thanks goes out to the Los Angeles County Fire Department for once again hosting this event that which turned into such a great success. Also I would like to thank Capt Eric Verwey for his participation and organization in getting both of the LAFD Posts involved. Members of LAFD Task Force 60 were instrumental in providing instructors for both the auto extrication and the live-fire training. Thank you all for all the hard work. And last but not least thanks goes out to FF Greg Stonebraker and FF Eric Gonzalez both from FS 60 for driving two of the engines with explorers, without them, our post could not have participated to the degree it did.