To wrap up Fire Prevention Week, the Weyburn Firefighters will be hosting an Open House event Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 pm.

“Meet the firefighters, look physically at the trucks, sit in them, stuff like that, we’ll kind of familiarize people with it,” explained Captain Mike Kaip with the Weyburn Fire Department.

“We have a free barbecue for the public, with hamburgers and hot dogs from 12 to 1,” he added.

He said the first hour between 11 and noon will be mainly tours as well as a meet and greet.

The hot dog and hamburger barbecue lunch will also include pop to drink.

Demonstrations at this year’s event will include a narrative play-by-play so the audience knows what is happening throughout the rescue simulations.

“Starting at one o’clock til three, we’ll be doing an MVA demonstration with our rescue and extrication tools,” he said. “Then roughly at two o’clock, we’re doing a high-angle rescue demonstration with our aerial truck off our tower.”

The motor vehicle accident demonstration will show how fire rescue crews extract people who are trapped in their vehicles. The high-angle rescue will use a stokes basket, which is a type of stretcher.

“You would take it up top and then the victim would be placed into it, and then we attach it to the lower attachments on our aerial and then lower them back down to the ground with it,” explained Kaip.

The fire department uses dummies for the purposes of demonstrations, for the sake of numbers and for safety and liability reasons.

Firefighters conducting a motor vehicle accident rescue simulation at last year's open house event.

He noted that the event will hopefully also help with recruiting new members.

“We’re trying to do a recruitment program because we’re short a few people on our paid on-call staff,” said Kaip. “So we’ll do kind of an educational thing.”

“Come on out, and visit with the firefighters,” he said. “If you like what you see and you want to join, you can always talk to the Fire Chief and he would be more than glad to give anybody any more information on it.”

The Fire Hall is located at 55 16th Street northeast in Weyburn.