September 10, 2015 - FireCon, Thunder Bay Fire Rescue and Draeger Canada are hosting the largest-ever attempted "live fire" exercise Sept. 11-12, at the Fire Training Centre complex in conjunction with the 25th Anniversary of FireCon taking place in the City Sept. 10-13, at the Victoria Inn.

Up to 120 firefighters from across Ontario, Manitoba and the northern US are participating in the exercise that requires 21 TBFR instructors and assistance from 20 representatives from private industry partner Draeger Canada to perform. The previous maximum included 30 firefighters battling live blazes.

The exercise is meant to provide a unique training opportunity to promote firefighter safety, practice fire attack and test incident command structures, protocols and tools.

"Our top priority is always the safety of firefighters," said Chief John Hay. "Thunder Bay has one of the safest fire departments in the Province in terms of our response stats, procedures and protocols and policies. We are also leaders in implementing Incident Management System so we've received a lot of interest from visiting Chiefs to shadow our incident commanders."

FireCon is the largest Fire Rescue training and education conference in the Province and brings together more than 300 firefighters and nearly 100 industry suppliers from around the region, Manitoba and portions of the United States. FireCon is being held in Thunder Bay for the 25th consecutive year.

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Contact:               Chief John Hay, Thunder Bay Fire Rescue & FireCon Board of Directors, 625-2101