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Bath Fire Department
IN SCHOOL PROGRAMS
Lt. Kevin Hylbert, Fire Prevention Specialist
Lydia Wochna,
Fire Safety Instructor
Lydia Wochna, our new Fire Safety Instructor, has a Master's degree from
the University of Chicago in social Service Administration, a B.A. in
Human Services with a specialization in children's counseling from Cal
State Dominguez Hills and an Associates Degree from Long Beach City
College in California. She has lectured many, many times over the years.
She used to lecture to nursing students, med students, interns and M.D.s
about child abuse (signs, symptoms, legal requirements for reporting
and how to report and document a case) when she worked for Metro
Hospital as a pediatric social worker that specialized in evaluation of
child abuse cases. She later specialized in working with families of
children devastated by illness, injuries and birth defects when she
worked at a small rehab hospital called Health Hill Hospital for
Children that later became Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for
Rehabilitation. She lectured regularly regarding the impact of raising a
Special Needs child on a family and the services available to the
children and their families, following as many as 30 families in 10
counties at a time.
Lydia left that job in 2000 and completely changed careers, purchasing a
polymer coating application facility and ran that for 6 years. The
company expanded and she formed a second company that applied spray-in
truck bedliners. Unfortunately, most of the coating jobs moved overseas
and the truck bedliner company was too new to stand on its own, so she
ended up closing both companies in the beginning of 2006.
Lydia is a volunteer firefighter/EMT for Hinckley (where she lives). She
has been on the department for 5 years, often helping with Safety Town
and other children's groups that come to the Hinckley Fire Department to
learn about what they do. She now teaches Fire Prevention and safety for
Bath and Richfield Fire Departments.
Lydia is also a member of the Ohio Task Force 1 (the FEMA Team for Ohio).
She is a canine handler in training with Kodak, a 2 1/2 year old Labradoodle, that is training for national disaster search and rescue.
She also has a 9 month old German Shepherd that is just beginning the
same training. The training process takes at least 2 years and they
travel to Dayton twice a month to train with the team. Kodak is
exceptionally good at moving around the rubble piles that are similar to
what an area would look like if it were hit by a tornado, hurricane, or
building collapse. Kodak and Lydia will deploy together if he becomes
certified. His biggest problem is that he doesn't like to bark and he
has to bark when he finds someone so that the team can dig the person
out of the collapsed building. Kodak wants to stay and quietly keep them
company. Lydia is working to try to teach Kodak to bark. If he certifies,
they will be deployable to anywhere in the United States and possible
to anywhere in the world depending on the need.
Kodak and Lydia just joined gold Star Search Dogs out of Medina to begin
training Kodak for non-disaster search and rescue. This is what a dog
needs to know if a child becomes lost in the woods etc, and is what
Kodak would need to know to be used locally by police and fire
departments.
Lydia is married (for 34 years) and her husband owns a company that
gathers evidence from computer hard drives. (All the stuff that people
think that they have deleted...it's still there in their computers). He
is an attorney by trade and has been recognized as an expert in this
area. He testified before Congress two years ago regarding the use of
electronic evidence in court cases when Congress was drafting the
federal rules governing this area of law practice.
They have a total of 4 dogs and 8 cats. the dogs are Kodak, Rocky
(German Shepherd), Canon (1 year old Lab/St. Bernard) that will be going
into training for therapy work and Charlie (14 year old Flat Coated
Retriever) and his job is to just wake up every day.
Kodak (Labradoodle)
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