The idea for a technicians association in the heartland kept coming up whenever technicians from this area got together, and that was the case at the Texas EVT Conference in 2007.

A bunch of us EVTs had exchanged business cards and bosses’ names. I took the business cards, created a distribution list and sent out an e-mail asking for input. I immediately got responses back from several fleet managers. We scheduled a meeting in Wichita, Kan., and Robert Sanders from the Oklahoma EVT group drove up and talked us through the process of forming an association. We then voted in officers and went to work.

Dennis Litchenstine — with C.E. Niehoff at the time — had volunteered down to teach an electrical course at our first training session practically for free and Hale Pumps offered to sponsor a lunch for the group. Sedgwick County EMS offered us its ambulance garage to hold the training, so all costs were kept to a minimum. We had about 40 technicians attend that first session.

Currently, the association has about 30 members —most departmental memberships — and about 50 technicians attend each training session. The association holds two training sessions each year, one in the spring and one in the fall.

Trainees seem particularly interested in the Ford classes; those always fill quickly. The last training session was geared toward the police-car maintenance with a Ford Crown Victoria class and an EVT prep class on installing law-enforcement equipment.
We try to offer a mix of training for fire, ambulance and police technicians. Some attendees seem to favor one or another classes depending on the cost for the trainers.

For more information, visit www.heatevt.com.