Citizens Jump Into JCFD's Fire Academy

A dramatic childhood experience had burned so deeply into Deron Wilson’s memory that it inevitably and irrevocably led him into a career in firefighting and public service.

He was 5 years old and living with his family in the small southeast Georgia town of Alamo when sirens and screams awoke him in the dead of night.

A fireball ripped the darkness with the candlepower of broad daylight and blast furnace heat so intense that it could melt solid concrete.

A few houses down, hell on earth had landed in Alamo and his friend’s family’s home was engulfed in flames.

Everything they owned, a lifetime of memories and accumulated possessions topped by a sturdy rooftop and framed with solid walls, was reduced to ashes in mere minutes.

“I’ll never forget how it felt, the intense heat against my skin,” Wilson recalled. And the cries of despair from the family, “you never get over that. I wanted to become a firefighter that day because these were people I knew.”

That lasting memory has remained the impetus to Wilson’s career and fueled a resolve to carry him up the ranks from volunteer work in a rural fire department when he was 17 to former supervisory and training positions with Fulton County’s and Sandy Springs’ fire rescue operations.

Now age 43, Wilson serves as second in command as Deputy Chief with the Johns Creek Fire Department.

No surprise then that Wilson’s now been tapped by JCFD Chief Jeff Hogan to conduct what should come as a natural fit to the affable, highly respected and decorated leader with a first of its kind here in Johns Creek – an intense eight-week course allowing everyday citizen volunteers an opportunity to step into the boots of Johns Creek’s hometown heroes.

And so begins the inaugural Johns Creek Citizens Fire Academy.

“This is a brotherhood and y’all are all part of that now,” Wilson explained Monday evening in an elevated Southern drawl at Station 62 off Roberts Circle to a class of 12 attending cadets.

“We’re going to show y’all how it’s done. You’re going to ride along on a truck, handle hoses, see how fire investigators work arson cases and how emergency calls are handled. And eventually we’re going to call on you to help us in volunteer situations.

“This is it.”

Cadets won’t respond to actual calls or be put in positions of peril. But they will get unfettered but supervised access to equipment and exposure to JCFD operations that the average citizen would never see.

Following Monday’s Fire 101 session that included introductions from JCFD top brass and an overview of department hierarchy, including a warm welcome from Chief Hogan, cadets were all but guaranteed that for the next seven weeks they’ll go hands-on, head-on and heads-up with the most physically challenging and scientifically intricate aspects of JCFD operations.

It’ll be an intense and highly focused series of weekly three hour sessions spread over weeknights and weekends.

Cadets will learn how 9-1-1 calls are processed through north metro Atlanta’s state-of-the-art ChatComm 911 Emergency Call Center with a facility tour.

They’ll get first-hand instruction on fire science and First Aid basics, including CPR.

They’ll also get to try on and then discuss the use and limitations of firefighter protective equipment, including bunker gear and breathing apparatus. 

Cadets will learn all aspects of fire prevention training and how to properly operate fire extinguishers.

And toward the course’s culmination, cadets will attend a full-blown live fire ground training exercise.

The class is scheduled to conclude July 31 with a graduation ceremony at 6:30 p.m.

“This is going to be really neat to go hands on,” said citizens fire academy cadet Maggie Ladd, one of several women attending the testosterone-charged course.

Ladd is actually among five citizens fire academy cadets who also graduated the fall 2011 Johns Creek Citizens Police Academy course.

And like Deputy Chief Wilson, Ladd’s interest in public safety and the course in general is interwoven in memory – from Ladd’s volunteer work while in college in the mid 1990s at The University Of Arizona Medical Center at Tucson and her exposure to emergency workers there.  

That’s exactly what Johns Creek Fire Department command is looking for: capable and able-bodied citizens like Ladd to help get the word out about fire safety and prevention.

And a little public relations boost certainly can’t hurt.

But fire departments across the United States and firefighters in general have ridden a decade-long wave of popularity following reports of heroic sacrifice made by emergency responders on Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City.

Following the terrorist attacks on that fateful day when two jet liners were intentionally flown into the World Trade Center towers, firefighters were captured by broadcast TV news crews and amateur photographers charging into the doomed buildings.

Once inside they trudged up smoke-filled stairwells wearing full gear easily weighing 100 extra pounds but still set on rescuing anyone left alive.

Sadly, both buildings soon collapsed in a ghastly plume of white smoke, rubble and debris. And everyone inside the towers perished with their would-be rescuers.

But news footage of those firefighters unflitchingly charging the towers galvanized a nation that for a brief time had buckled at the knees.

And in the years that followed, a firefighter’s mission to save life and property and the mystique of their unwavering camaraderie has served a constant reminder to Americans everywhere that even in the darkest hours the intrepid among us remain steadfast in their resolve.

Follow Johns Creek Patch for the next seven weeks as it chronicles the progress of this first-ever Citizens Fire Academy.