Firefighters from across the region return to Alburgh for annual fire school

ALBURGH – Firefighters from across Northwest Vermont, Northern New York and Southern Canada once again gathered in Alburgh last weekend, collecting for the local fire school that has become an annual tradition for the region’s firefighters.

For more than half of a century, firefighters have met every year in Alburgh for firefighting classes and hands on training led by members of the region’s local firefighting departments brought together as the North Country International Fire School. The school is one of several regional fire schools in Vermont.

The school typically sends classes of firefighters around Alburgh and into nearby communities for specific training programs. After first meeting in the Alburgh Community Education Center, groups of firefighters scatter to locales like the Rouses Point Bridge for pumping classes or the town garage in Alburgh, where instructors often stage vehicle fires for their students to fight.

According to its organizers, the annual North Country International Fire School has become a tradition for the region’s fire departments, allowing firefighters to mingle with one another as they practice firefighting firsthand. Coming together, according to organizers, also gave local firefighters a venue for training that smaller fire departments often lacked the resources to host.

“The majority of Vermont is covered by volunteer fire departments,” Jonathan DeLaBruere, the chair for the North Country International Fire School’s board of directors, told The Islander. “This is another place folks can go to for training.”

Beginning in 1971, the North Country International Fire School has often drawn its classes from across New England, Northern New York and Southern Canada. Attendance at the regional fire school recently collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but organizers said the school has been able to rebound in the years since and was returning to pre-pandemic levels of attendance.

Beyond trainings, however, the North Country International Fire School has served as a venue for the region’s firefighters to build a community with one another.

“There’s people I took classes with more than ten years ago who I still talk to,” DeLaBruere recalled for The Islander. “You’re building this big family.”

The school often sees celebrations for local firefighters and memorials for emergency service providers who passed away. During this year’s fire school, organizers dedicated the annual gathering to Sanford “Sandy” Ladd, an Alburgh firefighter who previously helmed a fire department in Colchester and recently passed away from complications with esophageal cancer.

Among those presenting during the North Country International Fire School’s opening ceremony was Ladd’s wife Stacey Ladd, an emergency medical technician from Alburgh Rescue and an educator. Ladd spoke with the audience about her husband’s passing and urged firefighters to be mindful with their health and the cancer risks associated with firefighting.

She also encouraged firefighters to take advantage of the workplace compensation benefits promised to firefighters affected by cancer under Vermont law.

“The cost of what you do, many of it through hours of volunteering your time in your community, is not little,” Ladd said. “This is one way you can be paid for your sacrifice and your family can be supported through the challenges of navigating cancer should the need ever arise.”

According to the event’s organizers, the North Country International Fire School’s board of directors had unanimously agreed to dedicate the event to Ladd, a longtime instructor for the annual fire school.

“Chief Ladd was a firefighter’s firefighter,” Michael Antoniak, an Alburgh firefighter and instructor at the North Country International Fire School, said has he announced the dedication. “He taught us how to be professionals, how to respect tradition and how to look out for the person standing next to you.”

The North Country International Fire School also announced during the school’s opening ceremony this weekend that its organizers were working to secure property on Summit Road in Alburgh to develop a permanent training space for the region’s firefighters. Property owners on Summit Road have already pledged to subdivide their property and offer a five-acre parcel to the school, according to organizers.

According to DeLaBruere, the Alburgh property would host facilities for trainings the school typically only offered when dilapidated properties were available in the immediate area for a staged building fire. This year, the fire school had to send its students to Champlain in New York to practice fighting a house fire.

“This gives us a place we can use every year that’s really our own,” DeLaBruere said.