Effingham County firefighters will be able to get more training without having to leave the comforts of home — or at least their home station.

Effingham County commissioners approved a deal with the Fire Emergency Training Network so the county’s firefighter force can take classroom training without having to go to the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth.

County Fire Chief Val Ashcraft said he was introduced to the Web-based instruction at a fire chiefs convention. He’s already used some of the library, with a temporary password.

“This is an attempt to provide training opportunities for the career and volunteer staff,” he said. “We’ve got one career person who has taken college level courses on the Internet who got us interested.”

The cost is $2,200 for 25 firefighters, a cost Ashcraft hopes can be offset from cutting down on the number of trips to the GPSTC.

“We can have this bank of 25 course sessions we can issue out in various ways,” he said.

There also is a level of a control so administrators can log in and determine which courses to give to the firefighters.

“A hundred dollars per student is about as cheaply as you’ll be able to train anybody,” Commissioner Myra Lewis said.

Commissioners also approved the purchase of a pumper/tanker to replace two vehicles in the county fire department’s inventory. The new vehicle combines the functions of two trucks that the fire department routinely has equipped its stations with and should reduce the cost to outfit a station, Ashcraft said.

“A hybrid truck costs substantially less than buying two pieces of equipment that we would normally have in a station,” he said. “This would give us the capability of two pieces of equipment and cost $200,000 less by just having a single piece of equipment.”

The fire department opened its Courthouse Road station recently and has moved some of its trucks around to accommodate it. The pumper/tanker to be bought will go to the Clyo-Kildare Road station, Ashcraft said. Since 2003, the department has put a pumper and a tanker at its main stations.

“We take the best of the trucks that are retiring and put them in reserve service,” he said, “so when we have a machine that’s down or in maintenance, that’s one we use that day.”

In order to get credit for its ISO rating, the department needs to have two trucks in reserve, according to Ashcraft.

“We don’t drive them a lot,” he said. “We always try to get rid of the one that gives us the most trouble or has the most maintenance expense.”

The county will be attempting to take off its inventory list a truck that has had trouble passing an annual pump test. The pump has to be able to produce a certain amount of pressure to be put into service.