Around 300 firefighters participate in Fire School in Austin

(ABC 6 News) – It was a busy day for these firefighters.

Every year, Riverland Community College’s fire training division hosts their Minnesota State Fire School.

“We have classes from just the beginning level, we have a new firefighter orientation, people that have never through like an official firefighter training yet,” Fire/EMS Training Program Director Wanda McCoy said.

Here the firefighters participated in various hands-on activities.

One of the lessons was Auto Extrication.

Here, firefighters learned different methods to rescue victims trapped in a wrecked vehicle.

“When people are injured in an accident it’s important that they get out and we get them to the hospital as quickly as possible, and so by doing this, we decrease the amount of time it takes these firefighters to cut people out of the cars,” Auto Extrication instructor Jarrod Wellik said.

Another training exercise was basic pump operations which taught firefighters how to operate a fire hose.

“The red tanks you see are portable tanks we call them drop tanks, and there will be trucks that dump the water into the tanks and go get more water,” Basic Pump Operations Instructor Tim Farmer said.

This is used in scenarios where there is no nearby fire hydrant or well to store the water.

It was a long day of learning, but the program isn’t over just yet.

These firefighters will be back at it again tomorrow for the final day of fire school.