Fire in the streets of Hagatna—but this time, it’s training. For a week, the Guam Fire Department turned West O’Brien Drive into a live classroom, where the next generation of firefighters put their skills to the test in real-life scenarios. 

For the past week, GFD conducted critical training downtown with their 24th Fire Cycle. As a result, there was partial lane closure near Cassidy's Insurers. GFD fire Lieutenant James A. Pangelinan is the lead instructor for fire suppression and says for the past few months, the recruits have been going over the different aspects of fire operations and fire suppression, which all led up to this week's evolution.

"Which is a full blown fire exercise or operation, for the past two weeks, we've been breaking it down step by step and now we're incorporating everything all together to make it one big evolution which the recruits can do on their own without the instructors," he said.

Pangelinan says the hands-on experience provides them tools to better themselves. One of the fire recruits is 22-year-old Logan Concepcion, who shares the same sentiment. "Massive learning experience. It's working, it's got all of us the best that we can be. We're learning a lot every single day," he said.

Throughout the week, the fire recruits went through a series of evolutions. "All the evolutions today is tasks we do at a fire scene. Whether a house fire or a warehouse, any kind of scenes. We do ladders, we do supply lines, fire tech, we also have victim rescue, we also have injured firefighters down," he said.

The training is crucial knowledge—and Pangelinan says it goes beyond putting out flames, saying, "To include not just fire suppression, as we rescue we extricate a victim, we render care. It doesn't stop just because I am assigned to the fire truck today that i remove the victim, or the firefighter out and hand them over to ambulance personnel. No. We are all EMTs, we are all firefighters. We extricate, we give care."

And beyond the physicality, communication is key. "He needs to know where all his personnel are at a fire. When he/she knows where his personnel is, he can direct different units if they are already done with a task to do something else or if there is a rescue, he can conduct the closest unit to handle that rescue. So communication, being able to transmit and being able to do the task, is part of the bigger picture," he said.

Concepcion says the journey turned classmates into family. He said, "We all came into this not knowing anyone, and I'm pretty sure that most of us would consider us family."

Overall, Pangelinan says the fire recruits have been like sponges—absorbing the training and pushing themselves to new limits. "Shout out to my cadres. The program they designed here, it's amazing. It's working. We're all in our best shape of our lives," he said.