BATH FIRE DEPARTMENT
IN SCHOOL PROGRAMS
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 fro 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 Depts.
Lydia is also a member of 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 heard 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 (the German Shepherd), Canon, a 1 year old Lab/St. Bernard that will be going into training for therapy work, and Charlie, a 14 year old flat coated Retriever - he looks like a black golden retriever - and his job is to just wake up every day.
Education, Personnel, Equipment, Explorer Post, Inspection, BFD Inc., Horse Show, Training, Services, Special Ops
Created by Members of Bath Fire Department. Please send
comments or suggestions to lallison@bathtownship.org, Last update
Wednesday, July 02, 2008