The Conference

Two Days of Powerful Training

Friday & Saturday

The Alberta Fire Training Conference is proud to bring together the best speakers and industry professionals to share their knowledge and experience within the fire service.

The sessions will expand your knowledge and provide practical and intellectual insight into emergency services. HOT training offered prior to the conference gives you hands-on experience with a real-life fire fighting scenario, while the trade show offers a glimpse at the wide range of technologies and services available for you to bring to your team.

Join us for two days of powerful training where you'll learn to lead tomorrow's fire service.

Full Conference Details

Live HOT Training

October 15-16, 2020

Hands-on Experience You Don't Want to Miss!

Come join us at our 2020 conference Hands on Training.

In 2019, the committee switched things up a little bit to include vehicle extrication. Special thanks to Holmotro Tools and Shadowhawk for putting on this fantastic programming.

We can't wait to unveil our plans for 2020, so check back for future updates!

Keynotes 2019

Jason Hoevelmann, Fire Chief

First Due Tactical Decision Making:

for the Company Officer and Acting Officer

Full-day Saturday Session & Breakfast Keynote

This class focuses on all aspects of decision making for the company officer and acting officer. Pulling up to any incident offers a great deal of unknowns, even when we equip ourselves as best we can. This class offers ways to be as prepared as possible for being that first due company and officer.
The first five minutes of any incident and the initial actions taken will have an enormous impact on how the rest of the incident will play out. We need to prepare ourselves, both physically and mentally, to make those decisions.

This class will discuss the decision-making process and how to avoid biases in our decision making. Understanding our first due response area and conducting good recon before a fire ever happens. In addition, we will cover the following and more:
•   Size up, building construction and codes
•   Drilling with purpose and urgency
•   Intimacy with our equipment and team
•   Smart and effective tactics and deployment
•   Our role on special incidents
•   And more…….

Steven Orusa Fire Chief

Being the Leader Doesn’t Make You One

Full-day Friday Session, Half-Day Saturday Session & Banquet Keynote

As fire and emergency service department members our safety and effectiveness depend on teamwork. Our job is to expertly handle a crisis and leadership is the glue which holds a team together during that crisis. But the crisis cannot be ours.

All teams need leaders for better or for worse. But the leaders can make or break the group. Their influence and behavior strongly influence the team’s safety and effectiveness. Qualities such as discipline, focus, organizational skills, motivation, and a competitive nature make for effective team members. Do those same characteristics make it challenging to lead them?

Of the countless people who take on various leadership roles, how many encounter resistances to their attempts to lead or even hostility, jealousy or unfriendliness. How many find the transition to leader challenging to say the least? If, being a leader turns out to be a bad experience it is almost always because of the leader’s own ineffectiveness. Public safety operations attract special people, let’s talk about how to lead them effectively. The purpose of this presentation is to show you what special skills and methods you must learn to use today’s “model” of effective leadership.

A 34-year public safety veteran, Steven Orusa is the Fire Chief for the Fishers Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He has a Bachelor of Science in Law Enforcement Administration and his graduate work is in Human Resource Management. Chief Orusa Chief Orusa has served as a technical review consultant for NIOSH Line of Duty Death (LODD) Investigations. He is a published author and is a frequently invited speaker on public safety leadership and development techniques. Chief Orusa has provided analysis on public safety response for USA Today, Fire Chief Magazine, Fire Engineering Magazine, and has also appeared on BBC, MSNBC, Fox News and CNN to provide expert analysis on disaster response.