Onslow Emergency Services hosts summer camp

POSTED: 4:58 PM Jun 18 2013   UPDATED: 5:02 PM Jun 18 2013

Several Onslow County high-schoolers are getting a taste of what it's like working in Emergency Services. This week, Onslow County Emergency Services is hosting a summer camp, with hopes that campers will pursue the field.

"A person on the sidelines, someone choking -- not a lot of people know how to act in that situation," said camper Shakaya Kloppenborg. "I want to be the one person who knows how to snap into action and help that person."

Not only do these campers learn life-saving skills but also what happens behind the scenes. They learned what it's like working in the 9-1-1 dispatch center and the education and training needed for the job. Campers got to learn how to communicate over a radio and even read a compass.

Fire Marshal Brian Kelly taught the campers how to analyze a fire scene.

"The physical makeup of a home in year's past, and including the things that are inside the home are burning differently today than what they were before," Kelly said.

Kelly says education is incredibly important in his job, having to use lots of math, science and English to get the job done.

Campers photographed evidence from a case study to figure out how the fire may have started. Kelly says it's an opportunity to show them that EMS is not just the fire trucks, ambulances or police cars coming to the rescue.

"Whether it's communicable diseases, which is an element that we're doing right now, or land-based search and rescue, which is another one that they're doing, to understand that emergency services encompasses so many different things, and so many different areas and responsibilities, it's not just about those three components," Kelly said.

Whether the campers want to become biochemists to analyze blood samples, work with canine units or work as a 9-1-1 dispatcher, Emergency Services has a place for them.