A group of Lexington County firefighters completed basic wildland fire courses to become Firefighter 2s in December.
Lexington County Fire is standing up a dedicated Wildland Fire Team, and the SCFC helped provide the NWCG courses required.
The SCFC and LCFS will enter into an agreement that allows the SCFC to request the LCFS Wildland Team to assist on handcrews and with other suppression needs once the agreement is in place. Lexington County responds to a significant number of wildfires every year, and the organization saw the need for a specialized team to help ensure they can respond safely and that they can work seamlessly with the SCFC.
All of the firefighters completed these NWCG courses:
- S-130 (Firefighter Training)
- S-190* (Introduction to Wildland Fire Behavior)
- L-180* (Human Factors in the Wildland Fire Service)
- FEMA ICS-100 (Introduction to the Incident Command System)
- FEMA IS-700* (Introduction to the National Incident Management System)
*L-180, ICS-100, IS-700 and S-190 are online courses, and S-130 is a blended course with an online component followed by a field exercise to complete the course.
The field day consisted of five hours, completed on Harbison State Forest with SCFC instructors. Forest Protection Chief Darryl Jones served as lead instructor for the S-130 course. The online portion for all these courses combined takes approximately 34.5 hours to complete.