By Andrew de Souza

UPDATE: Local firefighters, cops on top

Jun 18, 2011 | 4:55 PM

Firefighters from around the western provinces competed in the FireFit Challenge at the Gateway Mall on Saturday.

The event coincided with the Prince Albert Downtown Street Fair and featured firefighting teams from around the region.

They ran, pulled, hoisted, carried, beat, and dragged their way through a grueling series of challenges designed to test the physical limits of the participants.

As FireFit president Dale McRoberts explained, the event is about taking the skills used every day and turning it into something that’s enjoyable for everyone, especially the audience.

“It started as a hiring test for firefighters in B.C.,” he said. “Since we’re doing real firefighting tasks, we think it’s important because we want to do our job better.”

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“And the public really wants to know that firefighters are good at what they do an so it’s a chance for us to highlight that we’re good at what we do and that we practice at it.”

Local firefighters made a strong showing as well.

Preliminary results have them qualifying for the national competitions in a few events.

They were distinguished from the other teams by the amount of support they were giving to each other with cheers as they completed the tasks.

Dale said it was important to foster those types of relationships are another main goal of the event.
“It’s important to always emphasize teams,” he said.

“When you talk about what kind of guys get into the fire departments, it’s a team background.”

PA police at the top

Not only did local firefighters shine, but so did members of the Prince Albert Police Service.

Constables Josh Peterson and Clayton Fidyk took part in the Top Cop portion of the event. They conducted similar exercises but added ones that mimicked pursuit and apprehension of suspects.

Not only did they excel in the event, but both completed the course in a time that beat the existing national record.

In the end, the Prince Albert fire fighters managed to score moderately well in individual times. Came in first place as a team and dominate the team relay, beating the second-place team by more than 30 seconds.

They’ll move onto the national events in those categories. The PAPS members also qualify for the national Top Cop competition.

Here are the results from the day’s events.

– Individual
– Team Relay
– Team

adesouza@panow.com