The Town of Elizabethtown is pleased to announce that the Elizabethtown Fire Department is now a Certified Medium Rescue provider by the North Carolina Association of Rescue and Emergency Medical Services. The Elizabethtown Fire Department now has certified rescue personnel along with a full complement of technical rescue equipment required to qualify as a medium rescue provider.

The rescue certification was awarded after more than a year-long process of training classes and equipment acquisition that concluded with an inspection on September 8th, 2017 by the Rescue Association. Official notification of the certification was received on September 19th, 2017. You can read the letter in its entirety here.

Elizabethtown is the first fire department in Bladen County to receive the medium rescue provider certification. The rescue program ensures that fire department personnel have received the training and equipment necessary to provide for safe and effective victim management related to highway vehicle accidents, high and low angle rope rescues, water rescues and farm machinery related emergencies. There are currently only (141) fire departments in North Carolina certified as Medium Rescue providers.

The rescue standards and certification process is administered by the North Carolina Association of Rescue and Emergency Medical Services. The technical rescue standards include NFPA 1006 and NFPA 1670. By becoming a certified technical rescue provider agency, it recognizes that the Town of Elizabethtown Fire Department has a vison to provide exceptional rescue services and has met the required equipment inventory and personnel training certifications needed to achieve medium rescue provider status. The minimum standards for rescue certification requires that at least eight (8) members of the department be trained as a state certified Vehicle and Machinery Rescue Technician. The Technical Rescue training program consists of (16) classes over a total of (168) class hours. With this rescue certification, the Elizabethtown Fire Department also becomes part of a state wide resource list that will potentially benefit other communities in the event of natural disasters.