A joint Fire Department training exercise is happening this weekend at the building on 13 Bowes Street.
This Saturday and Sunday, between 8 AM and 5 PM, Parry Sound FD says there will be a large fire department presence at the building.
Oliver Moloney, Parry Sound FD Chief Training Officer, told MyParrySoundNow this is an amazing training opportunity made available by the Friendship Center in town.
“The Friendship Centre staff in Parry Sound have offered us their building, which is coming up for demolition very soon, to do some practical training. There is a very short window of opportunity that we were given to train on this building so we took it.” said Moloney.
He said it will be two straight days, 16 hours of practical training involving Parry Sound, McDougal, Carling and McKellar FD’s.
“We anticipate there’s going to be about 30 firefighters involved, probably about seven or eight fire trucks will be on site as well,” he said, “The training will consist of skills type training where firefighters will be making cuts in walls, a lot of interior operations where we learn how to cut through various types of walls.”
Moloney explains how the Friendship Center is a very unique building that offers a nice environment to challenge firefighters in different types of training activities.
He said in terms of what to expect, some noise may happen in the area but it shouldn’t be too bad as a lot of the operations will be taking place inside the actual building.
“You will see a number of firefighters on the exterior of the building but we’re going to try to minimize the exterior noise impact and exposure to the public.” He said. “We anticipate there won’t be any vehicular or pedestrian traffic impacted by the training and everybody should be able to move freely past 13 Bowes Street.”
Moloney finished by asking that the general public try to stay away from that area for their own safety and because the departments are trying to do this with COVID-19 protocols in place.