Has anyone taken it?
I took the old IFSTA style curriculum for my FF1 back in 2002. There was 180 hours of intense training, and at the end of the skills end test day, I was hot, sweaty, beat up, and bloody. We saw heavy fire to say the least, had to vent with an axe, do multiple ladder drills, carries and rescues. Recently I took a FF2 bridge program to bridge my old curriculum into the new J&B curriculum and also bring it up to a FF2 level at the same time.
This past weekend I created my pratical end test and in my opinion WHAT A JOKE. They didn't care if we knew how to pull a hose lay, hook a hydrant, place a ladder, or anything along those lines. Heck half the kids that took a different class than me had never seen more than a garbage can fire, how can I trust someone to go into a structure fire with me at a scene, or even do a search without them ever seeing fire or feeling any heat?
This is what I got tested on...
*Ladders- cleaning and inspection, no raising, tying of a halyard, nothing.
*Search & Rescue & Mayday - Thought this was good, almost broke a sweat.
*Dispatching - Again, we don't do it but not a bad skill.
*Hoselines- Uncoupling with a spanner and a 2 FF method of coupling.
*Hooking up a foam eductor- Another useful skill.
* Pre-Plan a building - Pretty straight forward
*Knots- Placing rope in a bag, clove hitch around an object. No hoisting of tools or anything.
All useful skills but where's the Firefighting aspect of it, no interior, no hose advances, no venting??
Sorry for the rant and maybe I'm totally wrong here but it's not every day I spend 8 hours at a training, much less a test in full gear and not break a sweat. Anyone feel the same?