McLeese Lake Volunteer Fire Department now has an exterior firefighter.
The Department celebrated Gord Rourke’s achievement over the weekend.
President Ian Hicks says that 12 more members are right behind him with completing the training.
“Mostly just a basic level of firefighter training but I’ll tell you what when you look at what happened last year when you have a house fire or some kind of fire in the summer it’s going to catch the forest and now you’ve got 40 houses burnt down when you could have maybe contained it to that one place,” he said.
“That’s what we’re up to out here and of course, you always have to be ready for one of these apocalyptic things that occurred last summer.”
Hicks adds that the Department is also getting excited to put up a Fire Hall.
“Depending on how long the red tape and bureaucracy takes, we’ll have the property that we’ve been totally waiting for and then from there once you get the property it becomes quite a bit more real,” Hicks said.
“Everybody would love to see it by the summer, but let’s sit and wait and make it a 2-year goal.”