A long-time local volunteer firefighter dedicated to public education and helping others was honoured to be selected to attend a national fire safety summit in Toronto this month.
 
Donna Noble has 12 years of experience on volunteer fire departments, currently serving with Ponoka Regional Fire Services, both on the East and West District Departments.
 
She's back from sharing some of the challenges rural and volunteer fire department’s face at the National Fire Protection Association Rural Fire and Life Safety Symposium.
 
Noble says public education was a key focus of the event.

“The controlled burns, wildland grass fires are starting to become a thing of interest, some of the topics discussed out there is hoarding, whether it be in the houses or farmers with their machinery and then the tall grasses that grow over, education, just trying to get to the parents and a lot of times the best way to get to the parent is to get through the student, the big thing is the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide”.
 
Breaking down that "it'll never happen to me" mentality is always the challenge according to Noble.
 
She notes the Fort McMurray and Slave Lake fires have really brought to light the wildfire hazards we have, and this year we're faced with a farming community that may be forced to burn off last years unharvested crops.

The opportunity to network with other fire departments across the country was invaluable to Noble.

“It was really neat to understand the fact that we’re not unique, that our challenges, especially some of the recruitment/retention, ours is not unique to Alberta, that it’s felt throughout Canada with volunteer departments being 85% of departments across Canada and Alberta”.

Noble says manpower and meeting all the duties they have like inspections, education, and suppression, over and above the calls to duty with the members they have is one main challenge felt throughout the country.
 
She was one of two from Alberta that attended both days of the symposium.