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Permalink Reply by Christian M Hartley on March 11, 2010 at 5:59am

We train weekly, 3 hours, on Tuesday from 1900 - 2200. Quarterly trainings with mutual aid departments (we have three mutual aid departments so we try to have one of the three every month, making it quarterly with each of the them). First meeting of every month is a maintenance night where the trucks are thorough inventoried, cleaned, equipment ran, and celebrate birthdays of the members who will be having birthdays that month. 75% training meeting attendance requirement, and 50% turnout on fire and rescue calls.

Permalink Reply by Matthew Powers on March 11, 2010 at 8:33am

I work in a rural volunteer department and have recently become the training officer. This is a new position in the department so things will likely change a bit in time. We have a meeting every other week and alternate between training meetings and work nights. Officially we have 13 days on the calender for training. These trainings focus on our job performance requirements and stress safety. Maine is not an OSHA state but we have Bureau of Labor Standards requirements that we must meet. Most work nights we have an excess of time at the end of the night so I try to through in the BLS requirements like HazComm, Sexual Harassment, Blood Borne Pathogens, etc. here.

My initial plan was to go over each job performance requirements 1 by 1 and focus on mastery of these skills one at a time. After reading a tread from Warren Jorgenson I have decided to make the mastery of skills part of the process for new hires. During the training meetings we will be focusing on the big picture and working on more scenario based objectives. This will allow the officers the chance to work on leading, the Sr. firefighters a chance to refresh their mastery of the skills and give the Jr. firefighters a chance to learn the tricks of the trade from the Sr. members. I have not come up with a master list of skills to test yet, but with scenario based objectives, each type of incident will allow us to apply applicable objectives.

Members are allowed to miss 1/2 of the meetings before the officers can take away their good standing. Again, being a freshman at this there are some things to overcome with this but I offer my time to the guys that need it so that they can get the training outside of the normal meeting times. I can not teach 16 different classes on the same subject, but sometimes life happens.

Permalink Reply by Chris on March 11, 2010 at 8:35am

First Tuesday of the month is training 1900-2200. Second Tuesday of the month is equipment maint, we eat, have committee meetings and officers meetings.Third Tuesday we have a County Meeting with all the county departments, EMS and Fire Marshalls Office, to discuss issues within the county. Fourth Tuesday is training 1900-2200 and we train the months that have a fifth Tues. Every 3rd Thurs. is RIT specific training. You must have a min of 12 hrs per quarter of in house training and at least 48 hrs a year. This keeps people from trying to cram all their hours in in the winter months. The county also offers 2 schools a year to you can pick up another 24 hrs at them. And to top all of that off you have to make at least 75% of all offered department training. All new members have 2 years to get the NFPA 1403 courses.

Permalink Reply by mark Stiefer on March 11, 2010 at 5:19pm

Well i am the assistant chief at our department. we only require what the state requires which is 25% of all activity. BUT if the person dont make more time than that then we make sure that the fire fighters that show up more are the one that get the new gear and any thing that is needed first. however if the firefighter cant make that 25% in a month than they get put inactive and can only make it up by coming to training all month to prove they want to be there. after two months of not showing up they are terminated.
We train weekly tuesdays from 1800 to 2000.

Permalink Reply by Peter McCarthy on March 26, 2010 at 6:52am

Thanks for all the input guys. I appreciate it.