The Saint Lucia Fire Service formally welcomed forty-nine new recruits on Wednesday, December 8, 2021 during an orientation exercise, which was conducted at the Fire Service Training School in Vieux Fort.
Immediately on Thursday this week, the recruits will plunge into the very first component of their formal training, which will lead to the attainment of the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) Basic Level Certification.
Acting Chief Fire Officer Mr. George Victorin says the injection of youth, energy and vitality are just what the organization requires now, considering that the demands of the Covid -19 pandemic have essentially doubled and tripled the pressures of the job on the existing crop of officers.
“The Saint Lucia Fire Service welcomes 49 new recruits to its establishment. These are replacements due to staff turn-over mainly from retirement and resignations. They will undergo Emergency Medical Technician training in the first place before being deployed at Operations to assist with staffing challenges. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are experiencing a high level of fatigue and burnout from our frontline staff, so these additions will be a welcomed relief for us. The firefighting component will be conducted sometime in the future and we’re expecting those new entrants to be deployed at operations sometime towards the ending of February into early March 2022.”
The training will be led by in-house EMS instructors Officers Nimrod Prospere, Craig Joseph, Irenaus Henry, and Olvin Jn. Baptiste. Fifteen females make up the numbers in this year’s cohort and the Saint Lucia Fire Service is especially proud to have advanced from the era when the staff compliment of the forty-seven-year-old organization would have been 100 percent male.