(National Indigenous Fire Safety Council/Facebook)

By Logan Lehmann

NIFSC Conference and Competition

NIFSC Fire Safety Conference and Competition gets underway in PA

Sep 28, 2022 | 1:36 PM

Firefighters from Indigenous communities across the country have gathered in Prince Albert this week to attend and compete in the National Indigenous Fire Safety Conference and National Firefighting Competition.

The conference runs Wednesday and Thursday and will consist of eight unique one-and-a-half-day training sessions and one four-hour training session while the competition will take place on Saturday.

Senior Director with the Indigenous Fire Marshall Service Blaine Wiggins said that this conference and competition is a first of its kind.

“This is actually the first time that we’ve done a conference in collaboration with the competition,” he said. “There’s a full conference track where we’re focusing on a ton of different issues that we’re dealing with right from fire department training to hands-on training.”

Wiggins also mentioned that this event was supposed to take place in PA back in 2020 but because of the pandemic, the conference and competition were postponed forcing them to go virtual for the past two years.

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“Going virtual went well, albeit interesting,” he said. “It was a lot of being flexible but we wanted to continue on with the competition. It was innovative but it was around the fire departments being able to showcase and participate.”

On Saturday, 36 competitors from six Indigenous communities will compete, including Saik’uz First Nation in BC, Maskwacis in Alberta, Black Lake in Saskatchewan, Six Nations Indian Reserve from Ontario, and another community in northern Alberta and northern Quebec.

While this year’s competition has six teams, the event normally hosts eight but due to unfortunate circumstances, two teams had to back out due to considerations in their communities.

“We normally have a team from Atlantic (Canada) and Nunavut,” he said. “Unfortunately with some with some challenges in Nunavut they were unable to send a team, and then with the Atlantic team and the hurricane, they had to back out last minute.”

Next year’s host location and dates for the NIFSC Fire Safety Conference and Competition have not yet been selected.

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logan.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @lloganlehmann