MENU South Lynches Fire Department strives to provide realistic and safe training for our members. The Training Division, along with the Personnel Coordinator, is responsible for providing all training to department personnel. This group, along with the Station Captains is the driving force behind all training programs within the department. The Training Division meets on a regular basis to schedule department drills and classes. This division consists of a Deputy Chief, Battalion Chief and three Captains. Each station has two 3-hour drills per month on various topics. All station drills are on the same subject, which allows all members to receive the same training department wide. The first drill of the month is held at the individual stations while the second drill of the month is a multiple station drill held at the Training Ground. In addition to these drills, we have 4 quarterly officer training drills per year that include officer related training. During the year, we also have several department wide drills that include a water supply drill and training with our Automatic/Mutual Aid departments. In addition to drills and in-house training, we teach and host various South Carolina Fire Academy classes each year at our training ground. We conduct Fundamentals of Basic Firefighting, Firefighter I and II, Hazardous Materials Awareness & Operations, Auto Extrication, Flammable Liquids/Gases, Emergency Vehicle Driver Training, Pump Operations, as well as Instructor, and Fire Officer level classes. All of these classes are offered as needed at our training ground which allows our volunteers the ability to attend these classes without having to travel out of our fire district.
The South Lynches Fire Department has partnered with The Carolina Academy to offer South Carolina Fire Academy Courses to high school students during a designated period during the school year. We have been offering this program since the 2013/2014 school year. The students attend class each day with an instructor provided by South Lynches. This program has been beneficial to all parties and serves as a recruiting tool for our department and promotes the fire service both in the volunteer and career capacities. In addition to this program, we have a junior member program that allows members between the ages of 16 and 17 to begin their South Carolina Fire Academy certification training. This training program has been very successful over the past decade as many of our junior members have completed their certification training prior to turning 18 years of age. The certifications these students earn are not valid until their 18th birthday but it allows them to complete the necessary training at ages 16 and 17. We have had many firefighters in our junior program that are now successful volunteer firefighters within our department and we also have several others that have been successful obtaining full-time employment at other departments. The youth is the future of the fire service and both our junior member program along our high school program strive to ensure that our department remains strong well into the future.
South Lynches Fire Department Regional Training Facility is located at 115 Industrial Blvd. on a 10 acre site just outside of Lake City. The dream for this training facility began many years ago and, through the hard work and dedication of many, this has become a reality. Our site has a road system with named streets, five pressurized fire hydrants, a 1½ acre pond with dry-hydrant, rural water supply training area, two-story live fire training building with a four-story tower, flammable liquids & gases live fire training props, live fire vehicle training prop, roof ventilation props, forcible entry props, SCBA maze, sprinkler system and FDC props, emergency vehicle driver training pad and many other training aids/props. South Lynches has just completed a new fire training classroom building that is located on this site as well. This new building includes two offices for instructors, a computer lab with 10 computers, conference/media room, kitchen, restroom facilities, and a large classroom that can accommodate up to 182 people. This classroom can also be divided into two separate classrooms for conducting multiple classes at the same time. We are looking forward to putting this new classroom building to use to continue the training of our current and future members.
