It's back to school for retiring fire prevention officer

Judi Myddelton is passing the torch.

After more than 25 years with the Barrie Fire and Emergency Service (BFES), the fire prevention officer has left the day-to-day routine — if there is such a thing — of the fire department and retired.

Well, sort of.

Since 2009, Myddelton has also been teaching the fire prevention side of the profession to pre-service firefighting students at Georgian College.

Now, at the tender age of 59, the roles will be reversed.

“Naively, I think I’m still young and I’m going back to school,” she tells BarrieToday. “Thanks to the support of the BFES and the Ontario Fire College, I’m a well-certified fire prevention officer. But if I want to walk the walk and talk the talk, I want to have the background education that I’m advising young people they need to have.”

So come January, she’ll be a full-time student at Seneca College in the fire protection engineering technology program.

“I suspect they will credit me with some of the program,” she says. “But I’m super interested in sprinkler design and calculations, fire dynamics and the electrical complications of fire alarm systems.

“It will help me fill in some gaps in my education and give me the formal accreditation I seek. After that, I’m hoping someone will want to hire me part-time so I can continue to help keep my neighbours safe.”

Once a firefighter, always a firefighter and there are a few in Myddelton’s clan. Her daughter and son-in-law are both career firefighters in Vaughan and Oakville, respectively, and her son is a firefighter in Whitby.

Two years after joining the Barrie department, Myddelton became a dispatcher in 1997 and moved into fire prevention in 2004.

“I have no idea how many lives the fire prevention branch saved over time, but I truly believe that the best fire my community ever experienced was the one that never happened,” she says. “The challenge of helping building and business owners understand why the fire code stipulates the requirements that need to be enforced is incredibly rewarding.”

Keeping residents aware of home fire safety is also a never-ending part of a fire prevention officer’s job.

Smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and carbon-monoxide alarms are still the big three.

“If a person has a home fire today, they are more likely to die in that fire than they were 40 years ago,” Myddelton says. “The stuff in our homes burns hotter and faster, and our suppression teams have an onerous task to arrive at the fire quickly, especially when the homeowners didn’t have working alarms.

“Our crews are so skilled today, but homeowners and business owners have a responsibility as well.”

What about someone wondering if a firefighting career is for them? Today, firefighters, dispatchers and fire prevention officers need formal education in their field before their resume is going to be considered, she says, and fire departments across the province are hiring educated, skilled employees.

“Competition in obtaining jobs in the fire service is fierce,” Myddelton says. “Today, everyone starts with a baseline of qualifications, so those applicants are on an even playing field. What else can you offer your department? Do you speak a second or third language? Do you have a trade?

"If you want to be an operations firefighter, is fitness a lifelong ambition you hold? Are you committed to expanding your education even after you get hired? Do you buy into today’s mentality of first educate about fire safety, second enforce fire safety and thirdly commit to emergency response when the first and second lines of defence fail?”

And then there's your level of commitment. 

“There is an assumption about firefighters, and we’re talking about suppression firefighters, that it’s a job where you wait around for a real fire,” Myddelton says. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. Our training division works full-time keeping accreditations on any number of skills current. Our firefighters train so that the job they need to do is rote, like muscle memory.

“They need to trust each other. You don’t get that way by going to school and then waiting for a fire to happen.”

But when fires do happen, battling the flames and smoke aren’t the only challenges they face.

“We’re encountering some nasty situations,” Myddelton says of fire service employees. “Whether it’s the dispatcher taking that first terrifying call and then following the work of the firefighters on scene, or the firefighters and officers on the emergency scene, or the fire prevention officers who respond post-emergency to try to make sense of what happened, we know that we need to look after our emotional health."

She says BFES and the city have initiated "an amazing mental health support system," including trained peer support team members, within the service.

"This is going to be a critical part of a healthy fire department moving forward and I hope other municipalities will recognize the worth of investing in the mental well being of their teams like BFES has done.”