Pasco County Fire Rescue is helping to create a new training method using virtual reality.

  • Pasco County Fire Rescue helping to create VR training video
  • Fire Chief hopes the video will give firefighters different perspective
  • Firefighters will be able to use VR goggles, immerse in environment

The department was approached by Target Solutions, owned and operated by Vector Solutions, to create one of the first virtual reality training videos for firefighters across the country.

The department has worked with the company previously.

Fire Chief Scott Cassin plans for the department to use the video once it's completed and hopes it will be able to give his team a different perspective than typical training can.

“Being able to do it virtually rather than coming out here and doing these full scale training exercises like we're doing today, which obviously take a lot of time and resources to close down a whole city block there's a lot to it," Cassin said. "Whereas if we're doing it virtually, we can sit on the computer and run the scenarios and they all have different outcomes based on the decisions that we make."

Once the video is completed, firefighters can either watch it on their computers or they can use virtual reality goggles and become completely immersed in the environment.

Target Solutions said it chose a building in downtown Dade City to shoot the training video because it was a two story building and is similar to other buildings firefighters across the country may have to enter.

And while training like this can never completely replace hands-on training, Cassin said it does allow them to simulate certain situations that are very difficult and costly to produce on their own.

"It's hard to recreate some of the things that we're doing in these videos like a smoke charged room without having to bring in a lot of extra equipment,” he said.

Some Pasco County firefighters are serving as actors for the training video, with everyone very eager to see how it turns out.

There’s no release date yet, but the video will be available on the Target Solutions website.