The Rio Hondo College fire community received a new addition to help improve their program. A new homeland security center opened in Santa Fe Springs with the help of many local, state, and federal department. These different departments provided monetary donations to help build this new facility for everyone involved in the fire academy. The academy held the grand opening on Jan.19, earlier this year. Representatives from the Rio Hondo College Board, and Santa Fe Springs City Council held this event in unison.
The new center includes different training methods and provides a great boost in helping those trying to get involved in the security field. The training center includes help in fire services and programs such as dog handling training, and confined space exercises. The center is one out of only six in the nation that also helps provide training for first responder agencies and includes over $1 million worth of the whole program. This new center will help many people to get to where they want go in the field of security, and any career that needs training in that field. The program helps specify in cases of emergency as well, to really prepare everyone. For instance, a replica of a damaged home and garage as well as a large pile of rubbish is provided to help in such emergency cases such as an earthquake.
Over $400,000 was contributed by the City of Santa Fe Springs, and over $300,000 was contributed by the Rio Hondo College to add to the construction and upbringing of the new center. Alongside these donations, the team behind the construction of this new center received grants from different foundations such as the Santa Fe Springs Fire Rescue who provided a nearly $500,000 grant. Represantative of Santa Fe Springs Grace Napolitano and Rio Hondo College President Ted Martinez Jr. were amongst other members of the different boards to be in attendence at the grand opening, to unveil the new product made by the collaborations of each board.
This new security training center provides help and is essentially run by the Department of Homeland Security especially in the programs involved in the already existing fire academy at Rio Hondo College. The training at these centers provides a good new service for the community. The people who learn at the training center get a greater, closer training experience. These newly trained people will go on to provide the community with nurses, police officers, EMT’s, firefighters, and paramedics that will be even more prepared to get the job done, and get it done sufficiently.
