On Tuesday, May 16 three members of the Pioneer Fire Company were recognized at their graduation ceremony for their recently completed fire academy classes through the Bucks County Community College Public Safety Training Center. These members completed intensive courses with a significant time commitment.

There are two stages our firefighters are expected to complete.
Firefighter 1; Basic Fire Academy which is over a 200 hour course which encompasses most of the basics of firefighting in addition to First Aid, CPR, and AED training as well as Incident Command System and Hazardous Materials certification. At the conclusion of this class the graduates are certified as interior firefighters.

Firefighter 2; Advanced Fire Academy which is over 100 hours and introduces advanced concepts on top of our basic training including vehicle rescue, technical rescue, incident report writing and incident pre-planning. This course completes the NFPA 1001 requirement for credentialing professionally trained firefighters and allows our already certified firefighters to begin to really master their craft and also serves as a pre-requisite to begin fulfilling leadership roles.

The following three firefighters were joined by their peers and Assistant Chief Joe Connolly and Lieutenant Bob Zigmund from Pioneer to celebrate this graduation ceremony:

Roy Portner: Firefighter 1
Liam Casey: Firefighter 2
Kevin Plunkett: Firefighter 2