CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Editor's Note: This story has corrected CCFD Cadet Josh Salazar's name.
Del Mar College is celebrating the success of its 45th Fire Academy as they did something few academy classes ever do.
All 29 cadets in the class passed the Texas Commission on Fire Protection, or TCFP, Basic Structure Fire Examination on their first attempt. Two cadets work for the Kingsville Fire Department and the other 27 cadets work for Corpus Christi Fire Department.
Cadets passed the exam earlier this month after hundreds of hours of training at the DMC Windward Campus.
CCFD Battalion Chief and DMC Fire Science Program Director Michael Schmidt said it was important for the cadets to pass the exam as quickly as possible to avoid any delays in their training. He added that their success is a confidence builder for their first day on the job.
"It makes me really proud that they worked that hard and they did that well, because that's very, very rare," Schmidt said. "Even an 80 percent pass rate's high for a lot of entities that test in the state."
He said cadets will be out in the field for CCFD in June. Their months of fire training at DMC came after paramedic training, which he said was longer than it was when he went through his own academy.
"I've been a paramedic for 30 years and my training was four and a half months, now it's a year," Schmidt said. "So, it's just crazy how things progress, and it's good. I mean, it's growing the field, you know, it's making us better."
As both firefighter cadets and students at DMC, Schmidt said that helps create an educated workforce.
CCFD Cadet Josh Salazar said his class was told how uncommon it is for them to achieve a 100 percent pass rate on the state exam, but that his class aims for excellence.
"It's not rare to us, you know, this, we just did what we were trained to do, and did it well, as best as we could. We all helped each other," Salazar said.
Cadets spent their time at DMC fighting mock fires, doing search drills and getting in and out of their gear. Each had to pass four parts of the state exam for the class to reach a 100 percent pass rate.
CCFD Cadet Christopher Wilson explained that the academy created a bond that he will forever be grateful for.
"We're going through the fire academy, going to the same things, making sure no one really fell behind and then just pulling through as a team," Wilson said.
He added that the academy before his prepped him for what to expect during training. His academy is now doing the same thing for the one that will come next.
DMC's 45th Fire Academy will graduate on June 14.