Fire Chief Kris Olsen shakes new hire Zachary Martin's hand. (Prince Albert Fire Department/Facebook)

By Ian Gustafson

Making Moves

Fire Department promotes five and hires new member

Jan 9, 2020 | 5:12 PM

This week, the Prince Albert Fire Department announced five members had been promoted as well as a new addition to the team.

According to a Facebook post, Jaycyn Zablocki was promoted from captain to battalion chief, as was Darcy Rusk. Also, Travis Haduik, Trevor Wingert, and Shaun Schmitz were all promoted from firefighter to captain.

Five members who were promoted by the Prince Albert Fire Department. (Prince Albert Fire Department/Facebook)

Zachary Martin was announced as the Fire Department’s new hire and has previous experience in emergency services in Prince Albert.

“They’re positions within the structure of the fire services that were made vacant through retirements,” Fire Chief Kris Olsen told paNOW. “And in order to get the work done that is required for the fire service those positions need to be filled.”

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He said 2019 was a transition year for them as they filled many positions such as fire chief and deputy fire chief and worked their way down the list.

He said how these positions are filled, and how members are promoted, is through applications and candidate testing. Based on the job requirements, the process includes a written exam, a swim test, physical testing and a final interview if they pass all stages.

After these moves, they’re now fully staffed but are forecasting retirements in the future.

“Probably within the new year here we’ll be looking at another hiring or recruitment process,” Olsen said.

He said Martin’s prior experience in emergency services helped the decision. Martin is now a recruit firefighter and Olsen said when someone is hired as such, they have two orientation weeks to start. Following that they will go into a probationary program which lasts for a year. For each month of that period, the new recruit has evaluations before becoming classified as a fourth-class firefighter.

“They’re technically not a firefighter until they’ve put in a year and passed those probationary requirements,” Olsen said.

The department has a shortlist of candidates and have hired three people from that list including Martin.

“We’re quite happy with our choices,” he added.

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Ian.gustafson@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @iangustafson12