60 Canadian Red Cross volunteers from across the Maritimes took to the classroom this weekend in Dieppe for some training.
They participated in courses meant to advance their emergency management skills in their roles of responders or supervisors at emergency events.
Those can include small scale events like a house fire to larger events such as the severe flooding seen along the St. John River last year.
Jonathan Spicer with the Red Cross says anyone can become a volunteer if their heart is in the right place.
“We’re always looking for volunteers, and the requirement is just people who want to help people in their community,” he said in an interview.
The training part of an ongoing campaign by the Red Cross to improve its capacity to respond to disasters of any kind in Atlantic Canada.
Spicer says newer volunteers get started off with the basics, such as paperwork, and dealing with trauma.
“There’s always on-going training, but it depends on when people volunteer as to what kind of training they have when they go to their first response, so it can vary depending on person to person,” he said.
