Madison, N.Y. - This is RecruitNY Weekend here in New York State as many firehouses opened their doors to try to recruit new members but one area department, Madison, opened its doors today for a different reason.

Madison hosted a regional class called Agriculture Hazards Awareness for First Responders.

It's a class that often goes into graphic detail about traumatic injuries seen in rural areas, especially on farms due to farm equipment.

The class is led by Erik Merrell from the Bassett Healthcare Network New York Center for Agricultural Medicine.

Merrell takes the 7 hour class to rural areas across New York State.

Merrell says the class teaches a lot, but a big focus is on traumatic injuries, "Injuries that they might see caused by an animal, but also if there’s a barn fire, or some type of collapse, collapse they might come out to."

Edmeston Volunteer EMT Joe Phelps took the class on Saturday.

Phelps says this training will save lives, "The more knowledge we can get and the more exposure to it the better off we’re going to be as providers. I’ve been an EMT for about nine years and never really had the exposure of farm machinery, farm medical, so it’s very important knowing how to extricate, knowing how to take care of the patients, or whether we need air medical or ground medical. Doing this is very very very helpful when you get on the scene you know what to expect."