Heartland Alt. High students given opportunity to build skills for a career in wildland firefighting

SELMA, Calif. (KFSN) -- On a sunny weekday morning, on the quiescent Kings River, Heartland High School students hopped retired of a van, grabbed their gear, gloved up and adjusted their helmets to caput out.

The students are portion of the Valley Regional Occupational Program's Wildland Firefighting course.

Junior Briana Mercado says it's amended than being successful a classroom.

"I similar being outside. It's nice, windy, you get to beryllium with your friends, and you larn thing new," Mercado said.

The people is taught by erstwhile wildland firefighter David Cooper.

"Anyone successful the federation who wants to beryllium an entry-level wildland firefighter goes done this course," helium said.

In the classroom, students instrumentality FEMA courses and larn the basics astir upwind and however it affects wildfires.

But extracurricular of the classroom, they're getting hands-on practice.

They larn to usage a chainsaw and however to acceptable up a portable pump.

On the time we visited, they were helping to wide a trail.

"It is hard work, and the archetypal clip they spell out, they remark connected however hard it is," Cooper said.

This is the archetypal twelvemonth the programme has been offered to students astatine the Selma Unified alternate acquisition school.

Cooper says helium tin spot students' skills amended passim the people and besides however they consciousness astir themselves.

"One of the large ones is self-confidence. I spot that conscionable -- it's astonishing erstwhile you spot it from the opening to the end," Cooper said.

For students similar Mercado, she plans to prosecute a vocation successful wildland firefighting.

"All the hard work, each the agelong days, thing I privation to do," Mercado said.

She says she's grateful that a programme similar this is present offered astatine her school.

"I consciousness similar that's what benignant of helps, particularly with a precocious schoolhouse continuation school, that we get offered these opportunities that a regular precocious schoolhouse would. I consciousness similar that's what helps america successful our vocation paths: we get offered things similar that that we primitively would get offered," Mercado said.

Once students implicit the course, they are afloat prepared and eligible to use for entry-level positions for immoderate wildland firefighting service.

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