By Allison Smith
Herald Intern
Firefighters from around the country will gather in Seminole County April 1-4 for the inaugural All American Challenge and Training Camp. This qualifying event will lead to the U.S. National Championship event in September.
The course simulates real skills that firefighting demands such as rescuing a 165-pound mannequin, a Keiser machine that simulates forcible entry, hose drags, hose hoists, and climbing five stories in full gear carrying a firehose. The course is timed and has three divisions and three different categories: Individual, relay and tandem.
Firefighter Paramedic Jose “Hosey” Neluna said that at their training grounds, they’re setting up the events they train with to be more difficult than the competition.
“We train hard and we work hard,” Neluna said. “When we set up the course harder, we get there and the competition is a lot easier.”
This will be Neluna’s last year competing in the All-American Challenge, and his goal this year is to have his team be a part of the “Lions Den.”
“The Lion’s Den are your elite athletes,” Neluna said. “They are our top performers, and they do the challenge within the time that they set.”
Endurance, technique, and strength are what makes a winner, Neluna said. “We have people who have the strength, but they don’t have the technique or the endurance,” Neluna said.
This will be Fire Chief Matt Kinley’s first time competing in the All-American Challenge, and he said he was optimistic about the event.
“This is great for building camaraderie,” Chief Kinley said. “Firefighters at their core are competitive, so there is a lot of little internal competition going on, which is great. We race everything. We race to eat, we race to get to the truck, we race to get to the hose, we race to put the fire out.”
Chief Kinley said he ran the course tandem but also individually. He said that he wants to compete on an individual level and finish the race.
“I’m going to finish,” Chief Kinley said. “Everything we do is about competition in reality.”
Chief Kinley said that he is hoping the competition brings new people to the fire service, due to a national shortage of volunteer firefighters.
According to the National Fire Protection Association, the volunteer fire service has lost an average of 12,000 members a year since 2008, dropping from 827,000 in 2008 to roughly 635,000 by 2023.
According to the NFPA, more than 60 percent of all U.S firefighters are unpaid, and more than 80 percent of the country’s fire departments are either all or mostly volunteer.
“Florida is in a crisis when it comes to firefighters in the numbers,” Chief Kinley said. “The schools, even putting out the maximum they possibly can in the state of Florida, cannot meet the demand for the generations that are retiring.”
Chief Kinley said that he hopes that this competition can inspire future generations to the fire service in Seminole County.
