About 200 fire chiefs from departments across Alberta will be in Red Deer starting today (June 10th) for the 70th annual Alberta Fire Chiefs Association Conference and Trade Show, and some of Airdrie's top fire brass will be a part of it.  

According to Deputy Chief Ken Hubbard, he and Airdrie Fire Chief Kevin Weinberger will take in the entire five day conference while two other Deputy Chiefs will be there for part of the event.  Hubbard thinks one of the main benefits of the conference is talking to other fire chiefs facing the same challenges they do in Airdrie.

"Really it's to get back together with and network with other chiefs in different communities which have similar or like problems or issues or developing trends that are happening in our communities.  We like to come together and learn and develop new leadership skills by interacting with each other and attending instructor symposiums and hands on sessions that help us improve some of our skills and actually take some things back to our fire departments."

Hubbard says there are a couple of initiatives that are affecting Airdrie and other departments within Alberta that they'll be focusing on during the conference.  

"Working with the Alberta Wildfire branch and working on initiatives on urban interface and mitigation programs.  Even in our atmosphere we have interface with what we call wildlands, so rural infrastructure.  So looking at ways to interface with those correctly and making sure we're on the right track of working on mitigation programs to look after those.  The next one would be talking about critical incident stress and occupational stress within our members and responders who respond to calls every day and making sure we look after them and working with professionals in the field to look after their needs."

Another highlight of the conference for Hubbard is the Trade Show that runs Sunday evening and all day Monday.  "Most of our job changes, it's not the same job every day, and our industry is rapidly changing.  This gives us an opportunity to network with the many vendors on what new tools they have adopted to look after our new needs."

As the Deputy Chief in charge of training in Airdrie, Hubbard will be a host for a training symposium at the conference.  He will also be receiving a 30 year service medal from the provincial and federal governments, one of 193 medals being presented to outstanding firefighting professionals in the province.  

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