VIDEO/PHOTOS: Clackamas Fire Department is getting some major upgrades thanks to virtual reality or VR.
The station's brand new VR simulation program was funded by the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) grant. The department is now the second fire agency to use this program in the U.S., a department in Oklahoma was the first.
“When you go into a virtual space, your brain thinks you’re actually in there and it’s pretty compelling," Division Chief Rick Huffman told KATU. “What we would do is use a scenario that is extremely high risk, that doesn’t happen very often and is hard to train on.”
Huffman says there's not always a lot of opportunities to train on specific scenarios that don't happen in Oregon everyday, and the new VR headsets help fill that gap.