Do You Drill/Train With Your Neighboring F.D's?

I was wondering who out there regularly drills/trains with their neighboring Fire Departments. Are there special circumstances that need to be trained on such as non matching hose threads, special adaptors, different radios, etc.? Do you provide map books to your mutual aid F.D's so they can find their way to incidents in your area? Do they do the same for you?

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Permalink Reply by LT. EMS on August 24, 2008 at 5:01pm
we train with or neighbors here and there. some time we do a sunday of water wars and a cook out then we will mess around in the smoke house . we have to b/c we a a tanker company
Permalink Reply by Ray Edwards on August 24, 2008 at 5:13pm
At the moment , we don't but with our new chief , I see this soon.I think it is great as we do mutual aid with the surrounding depts.We all have a great relationship with the other depts. so this should be easy to accomplish.
Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on August 24, 2008 at 5:21pm
It makes sense to spend time with one another training, playing, whatever... Here's how it works with people, politics and fire departments (in my opinion of course...):

There are lots of reasons to encourage training together between jurisdictions and agencies. The most important is that you get to know people, personally. This means that when you do tie in on a mutual aid call, there is already a familiarity with one another. You simply will trust someone more if you have had prior "face to face" discussions and have gone through the evolution of creating a relationship to the point where you can produce something together, whether it be knocking down a fire, dealing with a MCI event or playing golf, I explain more about this below...

There are cost savings in these tough budget crunching times. It may not make sense to combine fire districts but it certainly does as far as training. Not that you have to do it every month but instead, dividing up the number of participating departments, and through your training officers association, have each department take turns hosting a training seminar / display / class / barbeque, golf tournament, or whatever activity you can put together.

And for those with apprehension about meeting new people or getting outside of your boxes, here's the general principles for group dynamics or how people will ALWAYS behave when put into a group setting that is unfamiliar... They teach this stuff when you go through the California Fire Service Master Instructor Program, so if you've heard this before then it's a good review. Knowing how people are going to react ahead of time gives one a certain advantage. What we do for a living is deal routinely with large groups and of course with our fellow firefighters, EMS folks and law enforcement.

The (4) four steps (FSNP) for group dynamics are as follows:

forming
storming
norming
performing

1. When your first meet someone (1st impressions) you form a mental opinion about that person. This is where personal bias, gender, clothing, race all that stuff comes into your head and people immediately size someone up and form and opinion, whether its accurate or not.
2. When you are in a group, leaders will emerge. Not everyone wants to be a leader with some folks preferring to be "watchers". Others, will want to take a lead in the group so the word storming is pretty dead on as far as describing this part.
3. Norming is where everyone is now comfortable with the situation, has accepted the leaders of the pack and are ready to go to work.
4. Performing is where everyone has a comfort level with the situation, and they are very much into performing what ever task or mission that is required.

Kind of a long winded reply but instead of just writing a sentence that reinforces the obvious, I wanted to give it some background so everyone works together as a team, not as a separate entity.
Permalink Reply by william burchit on February 14, 2009 at 1:25pm
i am a captain with a small volunteer dept in nw missouri.. we train every tuesday.. and the first tuesday of every month we play round robin. which means we go to out neighboring fd that we run alot with and have mutual aid training... going over all the trucks and different drills etc.... its good to know what you mutal aid company has and is capable of.. we mutual aid with seven departments. but only three of them will do the mutual aid training.. and its good to get to know everybody that might be there to help you out in a bad situation.. and what they are capable of....
Permalink Reply by william burchit on February 14, 2009 at 1:26pm
we are currently in the process of making out ma companies map books of our and theirs district. so we know where to go in their city and vice versa..
Permalink Reply by Fireyladd - Retired Chief Sharp on February 14, 2009 at 1:40pm
We train together when we can get them to agree to train with us. Hopefully more in the future. We provide a response directory to all emergency agencies in our area. This directory identifies every road security gate codes who's district is responsible and directions to this road. As well as special circumstances that may apply. Since we are the leading fire agency in our area we predominantly do what we can to help the other smaller agencies with leadership, training and sharing of equipment.
Permalink Reply by Dennis Brown on February 14, 2009 at 1:40pm
Yes we do alot of crosstraining with are new aerial and radio frequencies and team work so we are all on the same page
Permalink Reply by Fire Chick on February 14, 2009 at 2:17pm
no we dont it would be a good idea, but i know most ppl would not show up.... as of the maps i dont believe we do... it a small town surrounded by small towns so everyone pretty much knows the area...
Permalink Reply by turk182 on February 14, 2009 at 4:08pm
I just took over as chief the first of the year and once I get some internal issues out the way I am going to be in contact with other departments about training together. I have a essentials class going at my station and other department are attending it.

So I guess we are sort of training togther.
Permalink Reply by Doug on February 14, 2009 at 4:35pm
We do a once a year MCI drill in which virtually every department in the county participates, or they break it up into two or three MCI drills for each region of the county, and the departments participate in their designated region. EMA, EOC, Sheriff's Office, PSP and local police departments also take part in these MCI drills. We also train together during a live burn of an acquired structure. Hell, we even had 4 brothers come all the way from Canada for a live burn last year. And lastly, we train on occasion, like once every 2 or 3 months, with departments we run our most mutual aid to, and vice versa. Oh, and yes, maps and preplanning of structures are exchanged back and forth between the departments.
Permalink Reply by John Rulli Jr. on February 14, 2009 at 4:55pm
I'm with Brian
Permalink Reply by Barbara Nelson on February 18, 2009 at 8:49pm
We have four stations in our district. Our marion station drills once month with Jefferson dristrict, and our Mehema station drills once a month with Lyons dristrict. The main station in stayton drills once a quarter with Sublimity district. It really is worth the effort it takes to do this because when it comes to the big calls we can work together as one big group/family/team. We are all on the same page onscene and work as one.

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