VIDEO: Flames are filling up the rooms inside the Pike County Training Facility in Blooming Grove Township. Months of training have prepared these high school students to suit up and tackle a live burn.ย “When I first got in there, I was a little nervous because I’ve never felt the heat, but then I was like, we’ve been practicing for this for the last seven months,” said Elizabeth Miller, a senior at Wallenpaupack Area High School.ย “Today is the first time we have put them in live fire situations, so they are going to be certified as Pennsylvania interior firefighters. So in their local fire houses, they can respond immediately and help out,” said program instructor TJ Lofberg.ย
Their training is part of the Wallenpaupack Area School District’s Career Technical Education Protective Services program. Lofberg says senior class members put in over 500 hours of state and national training. “You need the people to come up to fill in the gaps of us who are getting older. It’s a young person’s game, it’s physically demanding,” explained Lofberg.ย Each one of the students participating in the program tell Newswatch 16 that they all have different reasons for why they wanted to become first responders. “So I’ve always had a passion for it since I was a little girl. I fell out of it after I lost a family member to a house fire,” explained Miller. “And then overcoming it was this program that quite literally saved my life.”ย
