WRG, established in 1999, trains firefighters for the entire Northwest Navy Fleet, USCG, NOAA, Bremerton Naval Base/Shipyard Ships, and has specialized classes for Seattle Fire, Fishing Industry and local agencies as needed. They support the vital mission of the Navy’s entire Pacific Northwest fleet—without firefighting and damage control, Navy ships can’t go out to sea.
“We’re so glad to be able to bring WRG in as a tenant.” Port CEO Jim Rothlin said. “We’re thrilled to be able to support them and keep jobs here in Bremerton.”
The new facility will be a state-of-the-art Shipboard Training Center complete with a modular type structure of a ship in three levels. It will be three stories in height & about 150 feet long. Because the facility is modular, once the concrete pads are poured, the prefabricated buildings will be placed and hooked up and ready to go January 1, 2021.
“WRG’s owner, Bill Gee, and the staff are looking forward to our move to the Port because this new training facility is going to drastically change how we can train the United States Navy,” Mike Tinder, Director, WRG's Bremerton Training Center said. “The new training tower is going to really help by giving us the ability to train more than one customer at a time and do more complex scenarios.”
WRG employs 20 people in Bremerton and takes classes of 24 people at a time. Students are bussed in from Seattle and Everett and by having a Washington-based training center, the Navy is able to save millions by not transporting students another state for training.
They’re one of three US fire training facilities currently training Navy firefighters and helping to support the Navy’s mission. The other two facilities are in California and on the East Coast. They are also the only civilian-operated fire/damage control training site in the entire DOD community to receive the rating award of “double-exceptional” for the Navy Performance Report on the contract.
