T-L Photo/MIRANDA SEBROSKI THE BELMONT County Tanker Task Force, Jefferson County Tanker Task Force, and Ohio Fire Chiefs Water Delivery Technical Advisory Committee organized the largest water delivery class in the Tri-State Region on Sunday. This helps to get firefighters ready to face anything that could come their way.

RAYLAND– The people who brave fires to help their fellow citizens received more training on Sunday to be at the top of their game.

The Belmont County Tanker Task Force, Jefferson County Tanker Task Force, and Ohio Fire Chiefs Water Delivery Technical Advisory Committee started out the day by having a training seminar in a classroom at Buckeye South School.

Shortly after, hauling water began as a training exercise in the areas by Dairy Queen and the marina in Rayland. Allan Ketzell, coordinator for the Belmont County Tanker Task Force, said 13 counties in Ohio, four counties in West Virginia, and representatives from Pennsylvania brought tankers and engines to participate.

Oil and gas water trucks joined in as well. Ketzell said there was a big goal on Sunday to help the task forces know what to do during a massive fire.

“Our goal is to flow 4,500 gallons a minute,” Ketzell said. “That’s a lot of water to move that way, but this is to re-create situations for a lot of fires that we have had in Belmont County. The last big one we had was a fire in Martins Ferry, so we are re-creating something like that as a training exercise.”

Ketzell stressed the importance of training for when a fire occurs.

“We average 20 to 25 incidents that we respond to a year and getting in and doing this is trying to cut off time in an incident,” he said. “We are having common settings, common ways to set up.

“Belmont County has almost 25 fire departments and what you are looking at is over 600 firemen getting in and being able to do this with repetition. It gives them practice to increase flows of water delivery in the chance of a fire or another large incident.”

The Belmont County Tanker Task Force trains two times a year in the spring and fall to get ready for any incident, but the training held on Sunday was the largest water delivery class in the Tri-State Region.