Crafton Fire Academy alumni get first look at new, state-of-the-art Public Safety Center - Crafton Hills College

Publish Date: Dec. 13, 2023

Fire Academy Alumni Attend Sneak Peek of Public Safety Training Center

When Crafton Hills College’s next Fire Academy launches on Jan. 16, 2024, cadets will have a new tool to work with: a state-of-the-art Public Safety Training Center.

Program alumni received a sneak peek of the facility on Dec. 12, when instructors and Interim Fire Academy Chief Ryan Harold led tours and spoke about the center’s myriad benefits.

Alumni, said Harold, “…are blown away, and I will say as an alumnus myself, we can all remember our humble roots here as fire academy students throughout the years. The overall sentiment [about the new building] has been ‘What an incredible facility to be able to train future firefighters with so many offerings for advanced training.’”

The Yucaipa-based community college broke ground for the training center in Jan. 2023, with funding for the $9.5 million project coming from Measure CC– a $470 million bond approved by local voters in 2018 to provide modern learning facilities for students enrolled at both Crafton and its sister college, San Bernardino Valley College. Construction on the three-story building is now complete, just in time for the new crop of cadets to start their studies.

Features of the center include:

·         Fire-burn props suitable for kitchen and bedroom simulation experiences,

·         Space for commercial, industrial, apartment, and residential fire response training,

·         Additional room for rope rescue and ladder drill and rappelling operations, and

·         A live-fire training facility to be completed in April.

Training of future academy cadets will take place inside the new space and its current instruction site located adjacent to the center.

The center’s modern features will address an ever-changing career field, and College leaders believe it will attract more cadets to Crafton to fill a declining population of fire fighters.

“What I hope [new cadets] get is a new opportunity to simulate the environment that they will actually enter … once they are serving their communities as firefighters,” Harold said. “We’re fully capable of simulating real-life emergencies now in an all-risk environment where we can capture training evolutions in every scenario that they may be faced with.”

Crafton hosts two fire academies each school year – one in the Fall semester and the other in the Spring. The 18-unit program is composed of both in-class and in-field training, with cadets training from 6 a.m. until 5 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and an occasional Wednesday for 18 weeks at a time. Acceptance into the academy is on a first-come, first-served basis.

To join the Crafton Hills College Fire Academy Alumni Association, go to craftonhills.edu/fireacademyalumniassociation.