Firefighters excel at 12th annual Morinville Fire Department combat challenge

by Stephen Dafoe
At this year’s Morinville Festival Days, attendees were privileged to witness the sheer bravery of
our province’s firefighters. These heroes, without a second thought, rush into burning buildings,
risking their lives to save others and combat fires.
The Morinville Fire Department hosted the 12th annual Firefighters’ Combat Challenge at the
Morinville Leisure Centre on Saturday, June 15. This event, the largest of its kind, brought
together a record gathering of firefighters from within and outside the region.
For four hours on Saturday, firefighters in three divisions, Masters, Men’s and Women’s, went
through an obstacle course that tested many of their firefighting skills and demonstrated that the
occupation is challenging, even with countless hours of training.
Dressed in full gear, competitors started the course by carrying a packed fire hose on their back
up four flights of stairs, where they dropped the pack and used a rope to haul another bundled
fire hose from the ground up to the top floor. Upon completing that task, each firefighter returned
to ground level, ensuring their feet touched each step in the four-storey scaffold structure. On the
ground, competitors drove a concrete block a distance of one foot using a sledgehammer, an
exercise replicating the exertion needed for a forced entry. Next, the firefighter manoeuvred
around a set of fire hydrants to grab a fully charged fire hose, drag it back across the arena floor
obstacle course and let loose on a target. The firefighters then exchanged the heavy hose for an
equally heavy rescue dummy, dragging the 200-pound dead weight across the arena floor lot to
reach the finish line to applause and pyrotechnics.
This year’s event had 52 competitors: Ten in the Masters’ Division, six in the Women’s Division
and 33 in the Men’s Division.
Morinville did not place in the top three in the Masters’ division this year. First place went to
Leduc County firefighter Jory Bourdon with a course time of 1:43:20. Jason Gieblehaus from
Beaumont took second place with a time of 1:53:34, and Pembina firefighter Quenton White
took third spot with a time of 2:19:36.
In the Women’s Division, Jenna Sitar from Hinton took first place again this year with a time of
2:46:34, beating her first-place record from 2023 of 3:10:56. Second place went to Beaumont
firefighter Kim Walter with a time of 2:53:53, and third place went to Amy Carter from Lac St.
Anne with a time of 4:08:19 AM.
Morinville dominated the top three in Men’s Division with two top-three times. Morinville
firefighters Steven Holubowich took first place with a time of 1:27:31, and multi-event winner
Joshua Cust took third spot this year with a time of 1:39:31. Cust was two-and-a-half seconds
behind second-place finisher TJ Anderson from Spruce Grove with a time of 1:37:03 seconds.

In addition to the three divisions, a relay event was held, with Morinville Fire Department taking
first place with a time of 1:18:08. Morinville and Spruce Grove combined to make another team,
which finished in second place with a time of 1:23:08. Beaumont’s relay team held third place
with a time of 1:27:11.