Training is key, but scheduling is tough for MDTRFS

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Vauxhall Advance

By Trevor Busch
Vauxhall Advance
editor@tabertimes.com

Always a key aspect of any fire department is an annual focus on training and development for staff, and Municipal District of Taber Regional Fire Services (MDTRFS) is no exception.

“Our training program is – I don’t want to say it’s exhaustive – but I’m sure our members might say it might be,” said Nathan Coté, MDTRFS regional fire chief and director of emergency management. “We train steadily and heavily, both in practices, on, say, a weekly basis that our members attend, and then further, we take training courses, mostly on weekends.”

Getting a more regional perspective on fire training has been achieved through the creation of a Regional Training Committee.

“What that looks like is we have members, training officers, from each of our stations. So we have six stations throughout the MD, and they come together on a quarterly basis,” said Coté. “And they talk training, all things training. They help put together a bit of a training plan for us, for running courses throughout each year. And they help to assist each other between the stations, ensuring that one training plan is going out, so everyone’s training on the same ideas and topics. So I believe that’s helped shape our training program.”

While it might seem basic, driver training – especially in operating large and complex pieces of equipment – is vital and has become more popular with the membership. 

“One of the things that we’ve started doing is some driver training. And what I mean by that is to drive most of our fire trucks,” said Coté. “It’s a regular class five driver’s license with an air endorsement, or your air brakes course. So we’ve been helping our members going through an air endorsement course, and then furthermore, getting the endorsement added to their license. In some cases, we have three of our six stations that actually have tandem fire trucks as well. So you actually need the upgraded class three driver’s license. And so we have been working and helping those folks with achieving and getting that class three driver’s license as well. So it’s a bit of assistance that we can offer them. We also offer in-house driver operator training to our firefighters as well. When you normally drive, say, a Jeep Liberty or Honda Civic, and then we put you behind the wheel of a big fire truck, there’s a little bit of a difference there in driving down the roads. And so obviously we don’t just turn somebody loose behind the wheel of a fire truck that’s never driven something of that size or magnitude. It gets them a little bit more seat time so that they feel a little bit more comfortable with it, as well as teaches them how we want to see them respond to incidents while driving the fire trucks. So it’s been pretty successful. We’ve been doing that over the last three years or so. We’ve been running some of our guys through those courses, and it’s been very well received.”

Volunteers with the department sometimes travel to other communities in Alberta to take in training being organized by other departments.

“So the big one that we do is the NFPA 1001 course. So that’s sort of – for lack of a better term – our basic firefighter training. We would love and would like for all of our membership to take that training. And I would say we’re probably up in the high 80-90 per cent of our members have taken that training. So we’re pretty fortunate,” said Coté. “We have a pretty well trained group of firefighters that are with us, and that is probably about a 250-300 hour course. It’s a big one. They learn about hazardous materials as part of that course. All of our firefighting skills are taught in that course. From there, we send our folks off to different conferences and courses. We’ll be sending folks off in a couple weeks to the Alberta Fire Training Conference in Lethbridge. So we’ll have folks from each of our stations attending that conference. We sent a few folks to Bow Island working with some of our neighbours. They hosted a large vehicle extrication course this year. We’ve had two or three of our members up in the Vulcan area working with our neighbours up there, attending training courses. So it seems to be not just our regional fire service, but southern Alberta as a whole seems to be working well with one another. And all of our fire stations offer to each other to assist with training of members. So we’re pretty fortunate that way.”

Coté singled out embankment rescue as one of the more important training courses delivered in 2025, which essentially translates into “coulee rescue” in rural southern Alberta.

“Over the last year we hosted an NFPA 1041 course, which is a fire service instructor level one. So that was a good course. It helps us further some of our more senior member’s knowledge, and actually get them to start sharing their knowledge and giving back to the newer firefighters. So as a fire instructor this summer here, we hosted an embankment rescue course. The instructor came out and put that course on for us over a weekend. And so essentially, the way we look at this is, it’s coulee rescue. We get called, I would say, once or twice a year, for someone that maybe got hurt in the bottom of one of our coulees, somewhere throughout the MD. And so this course gives us the ability to somehow get them out of the bottom of a coulee. So it’s a lot of rope rescue packaging and loading patients, and able to use some rope techniques to get them out of the bottom of a coulee. I think it was the first time that we did something like that – at least since I’ve been with the MD for the last four and a half years. It was well received by our members, and I think it’ll help us into the future.”

“Another one we do is ice water rescue,” said Coté. “So one of our local district chiefs is a certified ice rescue instructor. So he puts on our ice rescue training for us each year, we usually do a little bit of some refresher training, as well as a full course for those that are new to it. So he does a pretty fantastic job of keeping our members up to date with that training and make sure that we keep our equipment in good shape and ready to go.”

Coté says First Aid training to become instructors is adding some in-house efficiencies for MDTRFS on a go-forward.

“One more thing we started this year, too, is First Aid training. So both myself and our regional deputy fire chief, we both became First Aid Instructors as well this year. And so we can now train that in-house as well. So for us, it helps us train not just our firefighters, but also our Public Works staff within the MD as well. So it was a pretty big step forward for us, and we’re happy to be able to provide that service as well.”

For a volunteer department in a rural agricultural area, scheduling training so it doesn’t conflict with busy seeding and harvest seasons can be something of a logistical nightmare.

“Scheduling – scheduling is the hardest. So we have six stations, all different walks of life, all different jobs and cultures and everything that goes with running a volunteer fire service and bringing everybody together to try to run some of these courses is tough,” said Coté. “A lot of agriculture in the area, and so farmers tend to like to train in the wintertime. Water and winter doesn’t always go well together. So sometimes that isn’t always the best, but we try to book around their busy seasons as much as we can. Obviously trying to schedule a bunch of training in the middle of seeding time or harvest time isn’t going to be conducive to having good support or good attendance by them. So we really try to schedule as best as we can and work with as many folks as we can to try to make it so that these courses that we provide or put on are available to each of our firefighters. I would say probably the hardest part for us is scheduling and making it work for everybody’s schedule.”

Trying to find the scheduling sweet spot isn’t easy, says Coté.

“They’re all volunteers, right? So they all have jobs outside of being here. So a lot of our courses and things have to happen on weekends. We have a very strong faith base within our fire stations as well, and so Sundays aren’t always the easiest or best to try to plan training on as well. My biggest thing is just thanking our members. It’s certainly impressive that they all hold down jobs, families, all the things that we all do on a normal day-to-day basis. And then on top of that, they attend training, they attend calls, they attend practices. So I have a huge amount of respect for what their abilities and capabilities are and how much they sacrifice to help out. So if anything, my biggest thing is just a big, big thank you to them and their families.”