Last year we provided the fire fighter I and II course for our fire fighter to assist them in their education. We found that as soon as the fire fighter passed they got the GOD actions. They got paid job and didn't look back. As the training officers I feel they used the district for the courses our department paid for, and paid them to attend. All but two fire fighters out of the 8 personnell have moved on. It is not that they bettered them self, I is the way it was done. I want to remind all to member were you started. there is things I am prood to say, is we train more then any dedartment in two counties, and when we show up on scene we are asked to help with IC or opion on the issues at hand, by the other Volunteer departments but the paid department act stand offish to us, as they do to all the voluteer departments. What is the differance between Voluteer and paid department? It is what they do between calls. We have paid jobs, and train often, we do not drop the course if we get a call, we start where we left off at in the next training meeting. We used to training about three days a week, and reg. meeting are every two weeks. We have had a decress in attendance at training and meetings.
During the summer we do a lot of public events, so we do less training in summer. Other then summer we train three day a week.
Q. What do we do to keep the Fire Fighter I and II trained personnel and work with the GOD actions?
Q. How do we work better with the paid department GODs?
You go! get all the training you can! for thows who want to training there is a lot out there to learn. some think that stoping at ffI and ffII is all they need. I fill being a cert junky is a great way to go. I makes safer and higher trained staff.
My point exactly. I have discussed the fact that on paper they are the same. It is what you do for additional training that keeps you up to speed, efficient and progressive.
Sorry, but fulltime guys have more opportunity to train while being paid everyshift as compared to a volunteer. I am not bashing anyone here, I spend more time training volunteers than paid guys. I am just stating facts as I can pull the training hours from our firehouse software on any paid guy working here and then from one of our call firefighters and the actual training hours and experience are "hundreds" off per year.
If you precieve that as "god like mentality" then that is sad. Ride time during a FF2 class with a paid dept and actually training everyday while being paid throughout your career are simply not comparable.
Glad your a career paramedic now after serving 5 years as a firefighter, not many people choose to go that way after carrying "the membership card". You clearly can't see my view on total hours of training, maybe you worked somewhere that the paid firefighters didn't train everyday, I can't speak on that.
But this clearly has nothing to do with the membership card in your pocket. How do you even know I am union? YOU have turned this subject into U vs V, meaning a UNION issue. My point is just one person's opinion.... and one that I can prove with statistical facts from our firehouse reporting system that the paid guys are more trained than our call or volunteer firefighters due to the amount of time spent in the fire station and has nothing to do with the union card.
Sounds to me from this post, that you have more of a problem with the IC system and the crews following orders or just freelancing. You need to have a clearly explained set of SOP's that detail the IC system, the implementation of it at scenes, and the clear identification of the IC, Ops chief, Safety Officer and all the way down to group leaders. Every group needs a radio (If not every firefighter), and the tactics the IC chooses needs to be clearly addressed and understood by all officers on scene.
Freelancing is a dangerous thing and needs to be put in check immediately, with aggressive punishments to make it abundantly clear to all that you need to receive orders from an officer before doing anything, and that freelancing will not be tolerated.
The bottom line of being a firefighter is the desire to help others. If you train people that goal should always be in your mind, and that regardless of where the firefighters end up, they are helping someone somewhere, and if they are honorable enough they will remember who got them there and where their training came from.