The Steinbach Fire Department was out and about Tuesday evening running practical training exercises.

Fire Chief Kel Toews says the fire department has regular training and planning exercises. He says on Tuesday they took the ladder truck to some of the taller buildings in Steinbach.

Lieutenant Curt Martens says they visited three locations with the ladder truck.

“We started at Linden Place in Steinbach. It's a five story building. We're just seeing how far we can reach with our aerial platform. The next stop that we went to, we went to the Steinbach Hatchery and we were checking to see how high we could reach with that. And now we're at the Steinbach Credit Union and we're checking to see how far we can reach.”

Martens says it would be nice if they could reach higher, but they were able to do what they wanted to do.

Toews notes they are pleased with the exercises and learned a lot.

“We just positioned it around the various locations, and saw how high it went and planned accordingly. It is interesting to see exactly what floor we can get to and how close we can get to the building and our access to the building in general.”

Toews says the crew trains twice a month, both in the classroom and in the field.

“They enjoy getting out and doing more practical exercises as opposed to sitting in a classroom for three hours, and it also gives them a chance to see what the limitations are and what we can do.

Toews adds they also did some practice with search and rescue and vehicle extrication.

“We have got some vehicles that we tear apart with our extrication equipment. We go through procedures and techniques. As far as the search and rescue we have got an old house that we have been using for training exercises, and we practice laddering and we practice searches for victims and stuff like that.”