Previous Story
DFEMS aims to host Fire Academy in 2019
The Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services aims to host a Fire Academy this year.
DFEMS usually hosts a Fire Academy if additional training is necessary or if funding is available.
According to DFEMS Commissioner Clyde Norita, the department wants to hold an academy this year to train enough individuals for incoming equipment.
“We have two new trucks that should be done production by the end of June or July and hopefully they get here in time…. We’re going to have another academy,” he said.
Norita said that an academy is necessary because the operators of the new trucks will need additional training.
“We want to do another academy because the two new trucks require four crews to operate it and there’s three shifts so that’s eight crews per shift so at least 24. That’s why I have to talk to the Gov. [Ralph DLG Torres] and Lt. Gov [Arnold I. Palacios] about that and the Legislature of course, their blessing on the additional manpower to operate those two new trucks and we’ll continue our operations of enhancing our personnel through training, and continuing of our programs like we have been doing and it should be business as usual with a lot more endeavor and zeal with the new four years,” he said.
Norita added that the department aims to further progress, as it has been doing for the past three years, in order to better serve the CNMI community.
“The past three years has really been great progress and strides for the Department of Fire and EMS. Personnel have been promoted twice in the past three years and personnel have new classifications and new the new legislation that created the fire department gave it more authority in regards to fire code and of course the fire lane…. all those were imbedded into the law that has been signed during this past three and a half years and that has given a lot of teeth to us as a department to better serve our people, protect our people, and so forth,” he said.
