Medicine Hat Fire Department captain Jason Labash speaks to thousands of people during a Tuesday morning livestream.--Screenshot from livestream
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@MHNmocranker
Medicine Hat Firefighters held a live tour of the station Tuesday and it has been viewed more than 19,000 times.
When the department went live at 10 a.m. and captain Jason Labash got on screen, the service wasn’t sure what to expect.
Fire prevention officer Curtis Noble says the department has been blown away by the support for the online learning experience.
“It was awesome – it went really well,” he said. “Right when we finished the stream, we saw 11,000 people had viewed it and we had over 1,000 comments.
“It was all positive feedback.”
The service streamed the live tour as well as fire safety messaging and interactive training work. Noble says many people asked about fire gear. People also had a lot of questions about the fire trucks.
“We were happy to see so much interest in what we do,” he said. “When we first thought of this, we definitely thought kids were the main audience. We saw people of all ages asking questions and interacting.
“There was people from as far as Oshawa, Ont. And places like Calgary and Edmonton.”
The local fire service is planning more online events like Tuesday’s and will announce more details on Facebook as they become available.
“We’ll do more, for sure,” said Noble. “It was a lot of fun for us and we hope people had fun learning about what we do.”
