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Shane Ray's "Rethinking Volunteer Firefighter Certification" article will make some waves...
The new superintendant of the South Carolina Fire Academy asks some tough question and offers some creative solutions to the problem of volunteer firefighter certification and just what that should mean.
Here's the article: http://www.firefighternation.com/article/training-0/rethinking-volu...
It is thought-provoking, to say the least. What do you guys think?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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"...in many, many, many parts of the state people understand that firefighters come with all or some of the skills you may expect."
"...in very small, rural communities in the northern part of my parish and most of my volunteer parish...the community knows what they are getting and fully understand the limitations of the fire department."
If any of the above is true it's probably a result of a rather well honed distaste/dislike for government in general and an idealized version of 'independence.'However, to use that brush and broadly paint that many [rural] communities understand and accept this is most likely false.
I do believe that most people have a common and rather broad understanding of what a fire department is supposed to provide. And unless someone has had a personal (and quite likely disappointing) experience with, or knows members of a VFD, I strongly believe that most people are not aware of the limitations of their fire department.
TV and movies have imprinted in most people's minds what a fire department is. [Ironically, this link which sort of sums up a lot of what is being said here, would in fact be insulting to most volunteer firefighters.] To believe otherwise is kind of delusional.
So while I get the whole gist of this discussion, and the need for exterior firefighters (with the requisite certifications), should we maybe be looking at the bigger picture (especially since Bob didn't comment on my suggestion(s) that the effort should be towards finding/getting funding to get members trained and if needed, some manner of pay to entice people to join.) If we're going to classify/re-classify who and what a firefighter is then maybe we should be doing the same for fire departments.
Maybe fire departments should be named, or qualified based on the level of service they are able to provide. Now, we could use ISO ratings but to people outside of the fire service and government, that number would be mostly meaningless. Maybe instead departments should be letter graded along the lines of restaurants.
So if a department has long response times (15 minutes +), or responds with only a couple of people, or does mostly, or only exterior operations, they could be assigned a lower letter grade (maybe a C-, D, D-) than departments that have faster response times, greater staffing and essentially always (or mostly) perform interior ops. And maybe have the letter grade on all the apparatus, and right out in front of the stations.
This way the community really WILL know the level of fire protection they have available and can then (if they choose) make informed decisions as to whether they want to live, volunteer and/or pay more or less taxes as a result of the letter grade fire department.
I suspect that grading a fire department might have adverse effects on the local real estate market and might make people question not just their own safety but that of their children, but the overall effect could in the long run be highly beneficial. As it would probably be embarrassing to the local town fathers specifically and to the greater community generally, it might help bring in more volunteers, more money or create a combi department.
Having read every single comment in this post I can no longer argue against the designation (nor the certification of) exterior firefighter. And I certainly wouldn't stick my toe into a debate about what makes a fire department. But I do know that police departments have the opportunity to become accredited, so maybe this isn't as crackpot an idea as some may already be thinking.
So we can't blame an individual department because they can't find members, or aren't able to properly train or equip them. What a department can do is a function of what the community will allow for. So I'm just suggesting that the community be made aware of the level of fire protection available to them. What they choose to do with that information would still be entirely up to them. But at least the public will now have something to base their decisions on.
I'm not saying a letter grade of F is a bad thing; it's just a designation that indicates what your fire department can do/offer.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Callahan on
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And your suggestion may not be such a bad thing, assuming that a an accurate measurement system could be developed.
I think there would have to be a lot of haggling on really what needs to be measured, and I'm sure that what i would see as an important measurement, others may see as not important, and visa versa.
I beleive that fire departments can be accredited, but I could be wrong.
In many communities, the grade may end up not mattering as there simply isn't any more money to be had given the overall poverty in many of these communities. In other communities, it very well could be a catalyst for the community to increase funding for the fire department through taxation.
It may or may not spur recruitment in volunteer departments.
Though again, we disagree on the perception of the department in most rural communities. they see the distances and travel times between fire stations every day and see who are members of the fire department, and in most cases are intelligent enough to make some assumptions based on what they are seeing. And in a small community a bad performance or a good performance by the fire department gets around town in a hurry, and we all know which one is talked about far more.
As far as payment, the problem is that many of these small departments simply can't pay enough per call, or per training, to make a lot of a difference. My current combo department uses a points system as way of giving something to the volunteers (about $12 per training and about $15 per structure fire, with lesser amounts for EMS and other fires), and honestly, it seems to make very little difference as the ones that are motivated will respond and the ones that are not don't. I have also been part of a couple of paid on call departments where the pay did make a difference, but we're talking $25-30 for basic call and more for a structure fire or longer incident. The money simply isn't, and likely never could be there in small departments in this area for that type of a meaningful pay system.
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Permalink Reply by Don Catenacci on
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Bobby,
For some reason this place won't let me comment by your other post so here goes.
Let me be brutally clear...If you support the EXTERIOR certification for firefighters that will NEVER go inside, then you MUST support FF1 for those that will. Your argument that FF1 is useless for YOUR Exterior FFs just doesn't hold water because you have said your Exterior certification would replace FF1 for your Exterior only guys.
So in reality what you are saying in that post is you support the lesser national standard for Exterior FFs, but won't support a higher level standard for Interior FFs like FF1.
I can support YOUR Exterior certification for YOUR FDs, but I would place money on the bet that you, and others here, will NOT support FF1 and FF2 as National Standards for Interior firefighters. Just to be clear I do NOT agree with Exterior ONLY FFs, but I am realistic enough to know that some FDs accept them. I will NEVER agree that it is a good idea.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Manning on
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When I joined my first, volunteer, department in KY in 1978, several of the founding members were over the age of 60. These people, male and female, were the impetus in providing fire protection to our community. They put on their boots, drove home-built apparatus, and put out the fires that occured in our community. I would be ashamed of myself, if I EVER said that these valued persons were not "firefighters."
I have not read the SC standard, so I cannot have an opinion of whether or not they would be supportable. I do believe, that to attempt to deny admittance to the fire service on the sheer inability to do interior fire attack is depriving ourselves of untouched talent.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Not necessarily so. South Carolina's minimu interior firefighter standard does not cover all of the FF I objectives, but it's the legal minimum and it has a state certification. There are other states that do the same. If I understand your and John's earlier posts correctly, the Wisconsin basic firefighter is a 60-hour program that also does not meet all of the FFI standards.
Since there is no national firefighter certification, what someone might or might not support is moot in that regard.
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John,
Since we ran out of room in the sub-thread, I'm doing a cut-and-paste to continue the discussion here...
Using that kind of minimally-qualified interior firefighters in a RIT situation increases the risks that you're not only NOT going to be able to rescue the original MAYDAY firefighter, you might just add more LODDs to the original one.
So instead of looking to have everyone capable of doing a job, and so forth, you are basically conceeding that those interior qualified FFs are thus expendable then, right?
Not at all, but they're going to be more expendable without the exterior firefighters than with them. The exterior firefighters can ladder, assist with hose stretches around exterior obstacles, do forcible entry, do horizontal outside vent, drive tankers, pump the attack engine, and a host of other activities that free up those scarce interior FFs for whatever other job, including RIT. I'm familiar with entire counties that have only a few stations with RIT-qualified firefighters, and those stations respond as RIT everywhere outside their first due. The other departments understand that they are accepting increased risk if they go interior prior to the RIT company (or station) arriving, but that is a conscious Command decision based on the totality of the circimstances, not just what certifications the 1st due station's firefighters may have. Does that make any firefighter "expendable". No, not at all, but RIT studies by Phoenix and a couple of other fire departments - and mine - show that it typically takes at least 3 RIT teams and 25 minutes or more to actually rescue a downed firefighter from anything more than a couple of rooms into a one-story SFD.
Face it Ben, even if you do have an outside dept doing RIT and if there is a MAYDAY, there will still need to be jobs done.....who's doing it? Exterior guys? You can have an attack team trapped, RIT goes in......who's fighting the fire inside? Maybe no one, but if the fire is in a SFD, there's a good possibility that the fire can be fought from the exterior. On the other hand, if there's not a rescue situation and interior-qualified manpower is shorthanded, that interior attack probably shouldn't be taking place at that point, which will result in no MAYDAY at all.
Stop hiding behind such lame excuses for lesser standards. That is a mischaracterization based on a false premise. I'm not hiding behind anything and your "excuse" claim is a mischaracterization. It has been a constant mischaracterization throughout this conversation, and it will be a mischaracterization every time you repeat it.
Then there's the fact that you're trying to make this simply about a 60-hour class. Several problems with that. Those classes are offered on weekdays in a block (career-friendly) or nights and weekends (supposedly volunteer-friendly). However, some of the firefighters in question can't make either the daytime or evening classes due to their work schedule. That restricts the classes to Saturdays only, which makes it tough to get instructors
More lame excuses. B.S. That is factual, period. You know nothing about it, so your "excuse" claim is uninformed at best and completely specious at worst.
Sure seems to work here, multiple classes, several places to do the certs, different times to accomodate. Gee, I don't know how they are able to do it in this state to have such a minimum standard. There you go making the same mistake Don did - assuming that everywhere else has the same variables as your state. That is obviously not the case, since at least one state already has an Exterior Firefighter certification and others are in the process of developing theirs.
Then there's the fact that South Carolina is an OSHA state that requires NFPA 1582 physicals prior to even taking the SCBA fit test. The fire departments that don't have the money to pay for that physical can't have interior firefighters, no matter what certifications they hold.
Fine, tell me this. How many of these departments to which you refer have no SCBAs at all? I will say that if an exterior only cert would improve their ops, then fine........but if there is even one SCBA on any rig......why shouldn't there be minimum standards in place to be utilizing that equipment? I don't know numbers, but I know there are some - I've run calls with some and taught fire academy classes at others. I can also state factually that some of the places that do have SCBAs don't always get enough interior-qualified firefighters on every call to wear the few SCBAs they do have. You are confusing equipment with always having the certified firefighters available to use it, when those can be very, very different things. There are minimum standards in those places - the standards are that if you're not interior certified, you do not don SCBA and you do not enter any IDLH atmosphere including the interior of a burning building.
And John, you didn't respond to my comment about departments that don't have the money to fund the legally-required annual NFPA 1582 physicals. How are you magically going to find the money to do that in places that clearly don't have the money? Is this another one of those situations where the Fire Chief is supposed to go out back to his $50 tree, harvest a bushel of Benjamins, and then find a physician that has all of the equipment required for the physical and who needs a bushel of those (non-existant) Benjamins?
I've noticed that it's very difficult to spend money you don't have, unless you're the federal government and can just have the Treasury Dept. print more cash.
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Less than half of NASA's astronauts have been into outer space even once. The "excuses" range from money to physical issues.
Yet this fact of them never being used in space doesn't negate the fact they still trained to the minimum standards to be an astronaut. Hell, if you want to continue on such an analogy there are a ton of soldiers, active and reserve, who never saw combat, but still meet the minimum qualifications.
What kind of astronaut? The training for space station crew is very different than the training for space shuttle crew, Apollo crew, Gemini crew, etc. The training for astronauts isn't all the same. It's based on...wait for it...what they actually DO...just like exterior firefighters.
Do you keep repeating that "excuse" claim in the vain hope that if you chant it enough, someone will actually believe it?
Sort of like you continuing to say that exterior only quals are not lesser standards? Not at all. Demonstrably, exterior firefighter certification is an improvement, since the people who will be getting that certification are already performing their duties without ANY certification.
You are not the artbiter of what constitutes a "reason" for places that you don't work or volunteer, or where you've never even been
Nor are you. You keep speaking in broad terms as well, how many of these places have you've been to? I've lost count. I've worked and volunteered in three different states, (and more than one region in two of them) with mutual aid across state lines in several other states. I also have traveled extensively as a fire and rescue trainer, and I know what I see and hear from the people that actually live in the situations we're discussing.
While at it, use Bob as an example, he is here alongside you being a proponent for exterior only and uses his dept as an example and so forth. There are plenty of depts that could have interior qualified personnel, but are choosing not to. Instead of looking to increase standards, we see a defense for lesser standards. Instead of looking at mergers etc, we are seeing excuses so everyone can play.
Three weaknesses with that one. First, I'm not Bob. If you have a problem with what he says, address it to him. Second, as I've stated before, merging more than one area with inadequate resources will simply result in the same problem, but with one logo on the doors instead of multiple logos. Most importantly, you refuse to recognize the reality. The people in those under-resourced places would LOVE to have more firefighters, more money, more time, more training, better equipment...but they don't. You are engaging in wishful thinking. They are engaged in reality.
The fact remains that Exterior Firefighter certification is an improvement in standards, not a lessening, as it's creating a certification for what those firefighters actually do right now. And...they're not doing it so "everyone can play." They're doing it to give their community the best fire protection they can afford.
Which again shows you are talking in broad senses to which you just criticized me for doing. No, I'm not. I'm talking about the places that specifically have non-certified exterior firefighters now. For those places, Exterior Firefighter certification is definately a higher standard than what exists at present.
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After much consideration, if that is the trade-off, I would not be able to support a certification process for exterior members.
I guess as much as I would like to see an Exterior Certification, my issues with FFI in it's current form for rural volunteers would not allow me to make that compromise.
That being said, I never stated that I supported volunteer exterior firefighters having to be certified as such to operate on the fireground. They should still, or could still be able to trained locally by the department and operate on the fireground based on that training. If the department wanted to require certification, the local department could require it, but I would not support that being a required minimum. Yes, I would like to see it as an option that they can pursue, much like FFI should be an option for volunteer interior members to pursue (but not be required to have to operate interior), but not as a mandatory standard certification.
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Ben,
I hate to do this, but I have to answer your lack of knowledge on Wisconsin Fire Training.
1) No one, John or I, said that the 60 hour ELFF course met ALL the requirements of FF1. It does however meet the BASIC requirements under Wisconsin Satutes to allow a firefighter to do interior firefighting.
2) The 60 hour basic course is 2/3 thirds of the hourly and course content requirement for State of Wisconsin FF1 Certification. If a FF wishes to become FF1, or is required to do so by their department, they then add on the 36 hour FF1 Module to finish the required course work.
3) In the State of Wisconsin the MINIMUM requirement to be allowed to work on the fireground is the 60 hour Entry Level Firefighter course. You are not even supposed to work in the hot zone until at least the first 30 hour module is completed.
4) Wisconsin has 2 tracts of fire training, the basic tract, and the certification tract. The basic tract has Entry Level FF, Entry Level Driver Operator, Entry Level Officer. The Certification tract has FF1, FF2, Driver Operator Pumper, Driver Operator Aerial, Officer 1&2, Instructor 1-4, and Inspector.
There is no NATIONAL Exterior FF standard either. So do tell how anyone would support that? It seems to be whzt you and Bobby are pushing for. To be brutally frank, your insistence that there is no National Standard for FF1 is ludicrous. The NFPA has a standard for that and the skills are listed in all the various brands of Essentials books.
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Bobby,
I knew you would never back that. You see it isn't what YOU want. Despite the fact that I find your idea of Exterior FF certification repugnant I could back it if we had a National FF1 Standard required for INTERIOR firefighting.
The fact you just don't understand is whenever you have a state or national standard you give up contol of the content of thst standard once all the suggestions are in, and the committee decides what will make up the standard. The same would occur with your exterior firefighter standard. Honestly I can hear you complaining about that standard because the course outline perhaps mentions the FDNY roof hook and you don't have any. Education not only teaches what you have to know, it is supposed to broaden your world to the alternatives. Perhaps one of your guys sees the roof hook mentioned, talks the chief into trying one and BAM! change occurs. Funny how the mind works best when you stretch beyond your little half inch of the world.
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No, the issue is mandatory certification, even with exterior personnel.
I never stated that I wanted an exterior certification so that personnel would be required to obtain that certification to operate on the fireground. I stated I wanted that so that members that wished to obtain certification would have that option, much like interior members have in many places the option of obtaining a FFI certification.
FFI/FFII, and all other certifications, should be an option, not a state level requirement, unless the department has adopted it as such. And I was advocating for the same with an Exterior Firefighter certification. While I disagree with that concept, it is the department's right to mandate such as long as they are willing to accept the recruiting and retention concequences.
I have no issue with the department mandating certifications for promotion.
If you haven't been able to tell by now, I have an issue with mandatory certification in the fire service. I don't beleive that members should be required to obtain certification and I don't belive that a department should have the right to train and test their members as they see fit based on their standards to perform on their fireground taken away by a state requirement for certification.
Entry level training should be designed to teach new members the departments way of performing the functions they perform. It is not the purpose of entry level training to introduce students to tools and procedures that are not relevant to that department's operations and equipment. That is the purpose of post entry-level education, which is why I fully support and encourage FFI/FFII, as well all other certifications as options afeter rookie training, but not as entry-level training.
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Permalink Reply by Patti Walz on
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It is the tone of your responses. It also makes me wonder do you really think this way or are you playing devils advocate to get a really good debate going.
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