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Things to do when its slow.....
Do all the guys in your department just sit around the station and talk and take bets about the next call? ....does any one have any good stories about this or other things like this?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Tiffanie Pettis on
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sometimes after meetings or practice we tell stories about recent calls or a group of us tries to predict the next call.... i have actualy been right on a few occasions which gives me somethin to joke with the guys about since im the probie and a girl...
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Permalink Reply by Justin Scott on
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i know at our station we do sometimes after meetings or training. most the time im right. alot of the guys say stuff like mva or fire. but i always say ems since thats75% of our calls. althought im not gana lie. its nice sometimes when im wrong
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Permalink Reply by Paul Stoops on
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Whrn its slow at our station, there are several things that can be done. A complete cleaning of the fire house, clean out the compartments of the apparatus, get training videos from the library and watch them. The list gets more added to from the Fire Chief. There are even times that we take the apparatus and train on what ever comes to mind.
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Permalink Reply by Reg Mathis on
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Find a new sub-division being built near your station and go walk through some of the houses that are framed up but not sheetrocked yet. It can REALLY open your eyes on new construction techniques.
Pick an address at random out of your coverage area and roll a truck. Determine where you would lay in and discuss problems which might arise.
My personal peeve is scene size-up. I am constantly trying to come up with new ways to "kill" my fellow FF when they don't do a good scene size-up.
Try to take a nap. You can just about COUNT on getting toned out within 15 minutes.
Put a sign out front of the station offering free BP checks. Good practice for your med responses and good PR for the station.
Just a few ideas!
TCSS
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Slow right now and this is what I'm doing. Our days are filled with training, pub ed, inspections and so forth, so time for some downtime.
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Permalink Reply by Robert Owens on
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No we don't sit around there is always something to get done....(granted we are a career dept with assigned tasks daily). Gotta fit in training, preplans, inspections, apparatus cleaning, apparatus maintanence, station cleaning, physical training, studying for promotion/classes, or shopping and cooking meals. We tray and fit all that around the engine, truck, and ambulance running about 7,000 calls for service a year. We try to get some sleep in there to if we can.
I recommend doing some of these things as well when it gets slow....there is always plenty to do befor the next call....so instead of betting on it, start preparing for it.
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Permalink Reply by Norman E. Flanders on
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Hi Tiffanie, I have a few ideas that should help you set up some training to help pass the time.
* You can get training ideas from FIREHOUSE.COM, FIREENGINEERING.COM, FIREFIGHTERCLOSECALLS.COM and other web sites. Great places for information and drill downloads.
* We do inter-department drills with our surrounding mutual aid departments. These have been very successful especially when it comes to RIT. My department hosted a RIT training class and exercise. We used a mobile home for training. Great place to train with confined space. We have also do SCBA training. It's unlimited as to what you can do.
* We have visited our local EMS/Mutual Aid Dept's. for training on their equipment: Covering vehicle layout, compartment contents, and vehicle operation. Great way for PR and interaction. Some day you may be asked to get a widget and you'll know where to find it.
* Each year we tour our local businesses and manufacturing facilities. Great for PR. We have also done simulated fires at some of these businesses. Have put FF in the buildings for search & rescue.
We do prearrange these with the business, go over our goals and plans. We give each business a guide sheet that covers the important stuff, { see below}.You be amazed at the positive responses and how happy they are that we take the time to tour and train at their facility.
* I even have had our surrounding mutual aid departments tour the key facilities in our town. This has been done for two reasons. One is for mutual aid response and the other is for mutual aid coverage. If they are covering my town I want them to be aware of where your going and what they may have to respond to. You can do the same in your surrounding mutual aid communities
* Table Top exercises. Great way to test each other on skills, community knowledge and fire fighting skills. I have downloaded many photo's of fires, MVA's, etc. for training purposes. These photos are then assigned an incident type, given a location, what is available for equipment & manpower.....then you are the IC.
To make it more interesting another incident may be added while en route or while trying to control this one. What fun these are. There is not a test or a grade....but we do go over each one with the people it's given to.........to see how they handled the incident.
{ I have these for use if you want some.....see below}.
* Area Familiarization. Nothing is more important than "KNOWING" your own community. This should include street/road names, key points of interest, water sources; winter/summer supplies, local businesses, do you have handicapped residence that need special attention, do they have O2, ask your members to really look at your community and list what they see on the ride to work/home, share what they have listed, etc.
* Ask your local fire investigator to give a class on 'METH LAB AWARENESS or SCENE PRESERVATION" Very important items for the fire service. If you set up the class ask your surrounding departments if they have anyone who'd like to attend. Great for inter-dept. PR.
If you want any of the photos I've downloaded with drills e-mail me at nrs5f@comcast.net and I'll send you out a few along with the check sheet.
Best of luck in your quest to better train. Stay safe, train often and share knowledge. Norm
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Permalink Reply by Joey on
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When were not burning up the streets in the ambulance or training, inspections and station duties we try and get in our workouts and play some fooseball on our beat up table or like said before get in a nap cause we know we will be up all night.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Everson on
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Our day sounds alot like Roberts with all of the station duties we try to get done between calls.
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if it was up to me i would be at the station training every day! there is never enough training...the problem in my dept. is getting people to actually organize and do the training. we have one set training night a week but for me its not enough. i take as many classes i can when they come around so i can stay buisy and do some stuff because i don't get a chance to do much at our calls or practice because we dnt have many calls or resources for practice. in my town pritty much every one knows everything and every one and there isn't much to do here.there are only like 2 big buildings that we would need to pre plan for and the rest is just little residential stuff and farms...and we have evough experiance with the farm stuff its not realy a big deal-we go oveffr that type of stuff in training periodicaly. i keep trying to get the guys to do more training and im hoping once things settle down from the summer a bit and classes, vacations, etc. ease up more then i will get them to do a bit more stuff because i want to learn and im bord! .........another problem is they dont want to to tons and tons of training with our main apparatus because it is being replaced and the new one will be arriving within the next couple months. so then there will be something new for all of us to learn!!
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yea ... i wish we had our "old station". we used to have a dart bord set up and a ping-pong table and we had a total gym type thing and weights so that we could work out and stuff- but over the past few years they have gotten rid of it all : ( ... i realy wish that we could get some weights and stuff again! the problem before iss that our insurance would't cover any injuries because we didn;t have a personal trainor for the dept. so the powers-to-be at the time decided to abolish the whole thing...it really sux and all the guys want it back-we have been trying for about 2 years now but nothing will get done
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