Fifteen-year-old Kayden Lawther stood in her firefighter’s bunker gear Saturday in Hempfield’s future fire department headquarters, learning with other junior firefighters how to use a large tarp to cover furniture or create a chute to drain thousands of gallons of water poured onto a burning house.

What would motivate seven teenagers to give up a Saturday morning and afternoon to learn how to be a firefighter?

Several of the junior firefighters said they were influenced by relatives who are firefighters.

Lawther, a junior firefighter at Adamsburg, said she is following in the footsteps of many members of her family. Her father, Joshua Lawther, is a member of the Harison City fire department. Her grandfather, Don Thoma, is an assistant fire chief in Hempfield. An uncle, Aaron Thoma, is a captain at Adamsburg’s fire company.

“I grew up around it,” said Lawther, a Penn-Trafford sophomore who is studying at Central Westmoreland Career and Technology Center to be an emergency medical technician.

Lawther was joined by six other Hempfield junior firefighters — from the Fort Allen, Grapeville, Carbon and Adamsburg fire departments — who participated in a an eight-hour training session at Hempfield’s future fire department headquarters.

They learned what junior firefighters are permitted to do in their duties and they put some of their classroom lessons into practice.

The township has been renovating the building, site of the former Hempfield Township Municipal Authority, since last year.

”I like the hands-on stuff,” Lawther said.

The training for junior fighters, those teens ages 14 to 17, is critical, said Anthony Kovacic, Hempfield’s fire chief and emergency services director. The sessions were taught by about a half-dozen firefighters, using the Pennsylvania Junior Emergency Service Program Compliance Manual.

“We want to make sure everyone is on the same page and no one is put in harm’s way,” Kovacic said.

With the conversion of the building to the fire department’s new headquarters, Kovacic said they want to take the opportunity to have more training sessions at the site.

The sprawling township has 11 fire departments, and there is a need for more volunteers, Kovacic said.

“We want them to be excited about becoming Hempfield firefighters,” Kovacic said, noting they are the future for the volunteer fire departments.

Family connections appeared to play a big role.

Salem Mettler, 17, is involved in the Grapeville fire company, said she also has a lot of relatives who are firefighters.

The training, she says, can be a little difficult, but is manageable.

“Hard work means you are doing it right,” Mettler said.

One of the participants, Fort Allen junior firefighter Landon Burnette, 15, has cousins who are firefighters.

The junior firefighters undergo extensive training in fire ground support, exterior firefighting, interior firefighting and a live fire drill, spread over 166 hours, said Steve Kohl, captain of the Midway-St. Clair fire company.

Kohl acknowledged the big commitment the teenagers have to make as junior firefighters training to become firefighters.

“At the end of all of it (training), it’s rewarding to be able to put your knowledge and all of your training to work,” Kohl said.

Important lessons

Among the lessons they learned Saturday was the importance of the duties of a junior firefighter, even if they are not permitted to fight a fire from inside a burning structure.

“As a junior firefighter, you won’t do much (firefighting), but you can help in the investigation of the fire,” Thoma said.

Doing the overhaul — “cleaning of junk so we don’t have to come back at 4 in the morning” — is critical to preventing the fire from rekindling, said Thoma, the Adamsburg fire department’s longtime chief before Hempfield restructured its fire services over the past year.

“You may think that something is insignificant when doing the overhaul, but it could be a clue to the source of the fire,” Thoma said.

The junior firefighters could be called upon to cover furniture or other items with a large tarp, to protect the valuables in a house.

“We do what we can to prevent a $1 million in damage from a $5,000 fire,” Thoma said.

Through experience, Thoma assured them, they will learn to know when “something just doesn’t seem right.”

They can get to the point where in seeing smoke, “you can read smoke —from when it is not bad to ‘everybody’s got to get out of here,’” Thoma said.

Thoma had some words of caution for the young firefighters when at a fire scene: “don’t wander in yourself,” but ask the officer in command if it is OK to do something.

“Our priority is getting your there safe, keeping you safe and getting you out of there.”

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