Hundreds of new firefighters have joined the ranks of Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) with a graduation ceremony held today at the Emergency Services Academy in Western Sydney.
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Of the new recruits, 60 have qualified to become permanent firefighters, with an additional 167 becoming on-call firefighters.
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Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience Steph Cooke said the 161 men and 66 women will be deployed all over NSW as they begin their new careers.
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\u201cEach firefighter has spent up to 14 weeks learning their trade, studying various techniques to deal with different emergencies, how to apply first aid, search and rescue skills, heavy vehicle driving and HAZMAT response know-how,\u201d Ms Cooke said.
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\u201cIt\u2019s heartening that the overwhelming motive of people joining Fire and Rescue NSW is to make a positive difference to their community and protect the irreplaceable: our loved ones, pets and homes.
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\u201cThe 227 graduating firefighters come from all walks of life and I congratulate them on the decision to join one of the most professional emergency service organisations in the world.\u201d
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Among the graduates is a leading Sydney Swans AFLW player, Rebecca Privitelli, and a former Winter Olympics Skeleton racer, Emma Lincoln-Smith.
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FRNSW Commissioner Paul Baxter said today\u2019s graduation ceremony represents the beginning of a challenging and rewarding career for NSW\u2019s newest firefighters.
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\u201cA career at Fire and Rescue NSW involves more than fire. Our firefighters are ready to support our community at their time of greatest need in all sorts of ways,\u201d Commissioner Baxter said.
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\u201cThey will conduct important prevention and education activities, as well as respond to a wide range of incidents across all our capabilities including technical rescue and road crashes, fire and hazardous material incidents, natural disasters like floods and bush fire and so much more.
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\u201cThe firefighters graduating today have shown great determination, from the competitive application process to the demanding physical training, and they will go out into our communities armed with specialist skills to be prepared for anything.\u201d
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Some of the graduates have already started at their new fire stations, while others will join their new platoons from Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hundreds of new firefighters have joined the ranks of Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) with a graduation ceremony held today at the Emergency Services Academy in Western Sydney.\u00a0Of the new recruits, 60 have qualified to become permanent firefighters, with an additional 167 becoming on-call firefighters.\u00a0Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience Steph Cooke said the 161 … Continue reading “227 new recruits join Fire and Rescue NSW”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19189,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19188\/revisions\/19189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}