Nelson Fire Rescue Services conducted an extensive fire practice for all staff last week.
Crews were up at the old Mount St. Francis building in Fariview using a smoke machine in place of setting real fires. They ran drills such as rescueing/retrieving a training dummy from a simulated floor collapse, putting out fires, searching for lost persons in a fire and rescuing their own members in a smoke filled room.
A large focus of the drills was to give senior members of the department practice time in the role of incident commander (ie, the one in charge, giving the orders).