More than 200 firefighters from across the country converged on Louisville this week to drill on the skills that matter most when a call goes sideways: forcing open a steel door, cutting a hole in a roof to vent smoke, or pulling a window sash to reach someone trapped in a bedroom. The occasion was the second annual Derby City Fire Conference, a three-day event that wrapped up hands-on training Tuesday and continued Wednesday with a full day of leadership sessions and further practical drills.
The training ran at the Anchorage Middletown Fire Training Facility on English Station Road, while classroom lectures were held at the Holiday Inn Louisville East, according to County Fire Tactics. As reported by WLKY, crews spent Tuesday working through hose line operations, engine company procedures and forcible entry, along with roof ventilation using different types of saws.
The conference is hosted by Anchorage Middletown Fire & EMS, and Todd Edwards told WLKY that the ultimate focus of the training is safety. “The primary focus is life safety and saving people's lives,” Edwards said, adding that instructors share lessons learned from both their successes and their failures.
Muscle Memory Over Improvisation
Trey Claycomb explained that repeated practice helps firefighters build muscle memory and confidence, telling WLKY that doing something multiple times makes the technique stick. He said firefighters should take what they learn back to their home departments to improve day-to-day operations, and stressed that crews should always be ready for almost anything on the job.
Neighboring agencies pitched in equipment to make the drills possible. The Fern Creek Fire Department and Okolona Fire Protection District supplied forcible entry props and gear for the conference's practical exercises, according to the Derby City Fire Conference Facebook page — a reminder that regional departments routinely lean on each other's specialized heavy equipment to stage this kind of training.
National Names Lead Specialized Tracks
The instructor lineup drew on more than 500 years of combined experience, per WLKY, and included nationally recognized fire service figures such as Kyle Romagus, Curt Isakson, Mike Ciampo, Rob Fisher, Steve Robertson, Andy Plofkin and Keith Stakes, who led specialized Engine and Truck Company skill tracks covering water mapping and hose pushes, County Fire Tactics reports. The conference also includes leadership and fire research components, and Candace Ashby led a session titled “Leadership From the Bottom Up.”
Wednesday's schedule was set to include fireground decision-making, water application and command strategies, continuing the leadership and hands-on training that has defined the event. Anchorage Middletown Fire & EMS is Kentucky's third-largest fire department, serving a 95-square-mile territory across Eastern Jefferson County and parts of Oldham and Shelby counties, according to Anchorage Middletown Fire & EMS. The department expanded through several regional fire district mergers, including a 2019 merger with the Eastwood Fire District.
Investing In Health As Well As Tactics
The department employs more than 250 personnel across 11 fire stations and moved its operational crews to a 48/96-hour shift schedule this past June, per its own reporting. In July, Anchorage Middletown broke ground on a $9 million, 16,000-square-foot Station 36 in Fisherville, a facility designed with modern cancer-reduction features that physically separate contaminated gear and apparatus bays from living quarters, according to a report carried on the Louisville Daily News Now feed. The U.S. Fire Administration says research suggests firefighters face higher risks for certain cancers than the general population, and that the National Firefighter Registry is intended to help researchers understand and reduce those risks.
That kind of long-term investment sits alongside the conference's tactical focus on a broader backdrop of national numbers. Firefighter injuries nationwide fell 15% in 2024 to 53,575, with fireground operations accounting for 30% of the total, according to National Fire Protection Association data reported by Fire Engineering. The U.S. Fire Administration recorded 81 on-duty firefighter fatalities in 2025, with stress or cardiovascular events causing 48 of those deaths and training activities accounting for nine fatalities. According to the National Fire Protection Association, an estimated 53,575 municipal firefighters were injured in the line of duty in 2024, down 15 percent from 63,175 injuries.
Separately, the National Fire Protection Association documented 62 line-of-duty firefighter fatalities in 2024, down 31% from 2023, with only three firefighters killed while operating inside a structure fire nationwide, per the National Volunteer Fire Council. Those figures reflect the kind of interior-fire survival gains that drills like the ones running this week in Louisville are designed to reinforce.
Anchorage Middletown's involvement in broader training efforts extends beyond hosting duties. Earlier this month, department Captain Raban Hennequant delivered a presentation on street leadership and emergency management challenges at the Kentucky Rural Health Links Conference, according to the Anchorage Middletown Fire & EMS Facebook page.
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