The Portage la Prairie Fire Department underwent Traffic Control Training this weekend.

"It's for when we're involved mainly with motor vehicle accidents," explains Fire Chief Phil Carpenter. "They could happen on the Trans-Canada highway, or right in the center of our city, and sometimes we're directly responsible for controlling the traffic around the scene to ensure everybody's safety. So that people are driving around it, or they're stopped and not interfering with what needs to happen."

Carpenter says firefighters can now control traffic in emergency situations like the RCMP.

"Sometimes RCMP are not readily available to come and do traffic control, depending on where departments are in the province. The RCMP could be an hour away from that incident, so we as firefighters responding to those scenes need to ensure the safety is there at all times. Therefore,  we want to make sure that we're trained properly on how to do that."

He explains why it was important for all their members to participate.

"So that we're all doing it the same way, and that communication is kept consistent throughout the department. So we can tell anyone in the department to go do traffic control we can do that because we're trained to do that. They can do it safely, and it's done for a purpose to make sure the rest of our members are safe when we do that traffic control."

Keep an eye out for the fire department on the road if there is an accident.