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NFPA -- Friend or Foe to the Volunteer Fire Department
Do you feel the NFPA and the NFPA Standards, are a Friend or a Foe, to the Volunteer Fire Departments.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by CHRIS on
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friend, just becuase your a volunteer dept. doesnt mean you cant be safe or follow different standards than everyone else, I am a volunteer and we follow the standards as much as possible. We are an NFPA approved dept.
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Permalink Reply by Steve on
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You have helped in my point. If the nfpa was setting such great standards and looking out for firefighter safety wouldn't you think that the number of LODD's would decrease; however thats not the case, in fact they are staying the same and/or increasing in numbers.
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Permalink Reply by Joseph Sajdak on
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Better gear keep us from the heat, we get comfortable and get in farther and hotter when we should be getting out. So, does that mean the new stadards are keeping us safe or keeping us in a false sence of security?
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Are you saying your company is 100% nfpa complaint? Your company must have a boat load of money if everything they change a standard or company can afford to change it immediately. If that is what your telling us i want a little of whatever it is your smoking.
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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on
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If the nfpa was setting such great standards and looking out for firefighter safety wouldn't you think that the number of LODD's would decrease; however thats not the case, in fact they are staying the same and/or increasing in numbers.
The standards will only lead to a decrease when they are fully implemented, across the whole country and there's a change in mindset around acceptable practices (tactics, training, PPE, driving, fitness, seatbelts, etc, etc).
You can have the best standards in the world, but if they're not implemented and followed, they won't do jack. It's the exact issue we come up with our Australian Standards- they're great on paper, but....
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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on
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Friend although if you have ever really looked at all the standars you would be amazed....its like a whole library of stuff....one person couldn't possibly read it all in one lifetime...and yet if we get hauled into court and we didn't follow them guess who gets hung out to dry...??? Yup....the Chief....I like to joke sometimes that NFPA really stands for...."Not For Practical Application"....But they are a whole lot smarted than me.....I'll leave it up to them.....I just have to remember..."put the wet stuff on the red stuff"....LOL Paul
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I know what your saying, I agree. You should try to be complainant as much as possible. It just kills me when someone tries to project their company of being 100% complainant. NFPA approved fire station, I've been doing this for 17yrs and never heard of this. If you ask me something smells with that post.
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you need to read allitle further, the words, AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, key word being POSSIBLE, kinda points that out sorry for the confusion.
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I am sorry, my point is that NFPA is not the enemy, they are trying to help the Fire Service, not hinder it even though some may think that.
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For the most part i can agree with that. The whole nfpa approved station was B.S than?
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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While NFPA standards are created by committee members that, in turn, represent interest groups, I don't think that the NFPA is really anyone's enemy, nor do they intend to be. The fact that there is a NFPA 1720 staffing/response standard for the volunteers that is different than the 1710 staffing/response standard for the career fire service is strong evidence that the NFPA recognizes the differences.
I am a particular fan of the NFPA 1403 standard on live fire training. Departments that fully implement that standard and that monitor their live burn instructors don't have training burn LODDs and serious LOD injuries. There's a long list of firefighter deaths and injuries from live burns that do not comply with NFPA 1403.
"What's the NFPA" isn't a great legal defense for departments who end up in court after a training LODD. Ask the ones that have used that defense.
I've heard firefighters (career as well as volunteer) complain that NFPA 1403 prevents us from having "realistic" live fire training. They're right...but not having realistic training fires is a good thing in my book. Realistic fires injure and kill us, because they're uncontrolled. We need to control training fires so that we accomplish our goal (firefighter training) in a manner that is as realistic as possible without taking unreasonable risk. NFPA 1403 compliance eliminates a lot of unreasonable risk (No Incident Command, no Safety Officer, the use of flammable liquids for interior structural fires, lack of pre-planning for acquired structures, etc.) that used to be the norm.
1403 is a standard that doesn't discriminate between career and volunteer firefighters. It applies to fire training, period. Meeting the standard is a lot of work, but it's worth it in order to actually train our trainees instead of sending them to the hospital or the morgue.
Ben
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