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What Simple “Tailboard Drills” Have You Found Valuable?
Baby it’s cold outside. It’s our busy season.
That’s why it’s so important to stay on top of our game, now more than ever.
It’s a great time for a simple “tailboard drill.”
I’m looking for your suggestions on quick company drills (for small crews of 3-5 or so) that you have found to be great ways to spend a few minutes while stuck inside.
Let’s gather some ideas and we’ll use them on a future Firefighter NetCast as well!
That’s why it’s so important to stay on top of our game, now more than ever.
It’s a great time for a simple “tailboard drill.”
I’m looking for your suggestions on quick company drills (for small crews of 3-5 or so) that you have found to be great ways to spend a few minutes while stuck inside.
Let’s gather some ideas and we’ll use them on a future Firefighter NetCast as well!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Norman E. Flanders on
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I have a few ideas that should help you in your quest for training ideas.
* I get training ideas from FIREHOUSE.COM, FIREENGINEERING.COM, FIREFIGHTERCLOSECALLS.COM and other web sites. Great places for information and drill downloads.
* Do inter-department drills with your 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 done SCBA training. It's unlimited as to what you can do.
* Visit your 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 and 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'll 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 their going and what they may have to respond to.
* Table Top exercises. 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 and 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.
{ 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.
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Couple simple drills:
Make some spaghetti with hose and have blindfolded crewmembers locate a coupling and find the way out.
Another is practice hooking up the buddy breather while blindfolded or darkened facepiece.
Practice on making a webbing harness for FF drags.
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Permalink Reply by FireDaily.com on
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Perfect! Thanks Norman!
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Ahh, the good old standby's. Taking away eyesight and taking away tactile function by using gloves are reality-inducing training scenarios. Thanks, John!
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Permalink Reply by Mark Harrington on
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This is odd, but it works, go out into the truck bay and don your gear and scba, and have your crew see if they can crawl under the truck, engine, etc. If they can great, maybe doing a full scba escape, to get under it. Start from the rear bumper and go under the truck to the front bumber and come, do this breathing air. It seems like a some what of a entrapment for the firefighter. It is fun, try it out and let us know. We done it and some people was amused at what they learned from it.
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Permalink Reply by Firefighter NetCast on
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Thanks, Mark. I remember doing this many moons ago as well, requiring me to slide the tank to my side and reattach it. We also strung some old wire to serve as an entanglement "trap". Appreicate your contribution!
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Permalink Reply by Derek R. on
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I’m looking for your suggestions on quick company drills (for small crews of 3-5 or so) that you have found to be great ways to spend a few minutes while stuck inside.
Something quick and easy that's good for the mind is simply grabbing the FF1 training manual and randomly ask questions amongst the group. Example: Joe's turn for a question. You fan through the book until he says stop. You pick a topic to ask a question about. If he gets it correct, great, if he answers wrong, he gets an "A". Another wrong answer from him will give him an "S". and so on until someone spells "A__HOLE".
Keeps it fun as well as educational. And no set-up or tear-down, just sitting at the table, and you can still respond to calls without getting things out of the way.
KSHF
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Permalink Reply by lang on
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Go through each compartment on all the trucks in house and make sure your guys know what everything is for from the biggest tool down to the smallest. I did the same thing with some of our newer guys and they didn't know about a few tools we kept on the truck. Good training for them and good refresher for you
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Permalink Reply by Robert St. Germain on
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For us up here in Northern Maine its diffrent. Even if its cold outside, which usually gets below zero, we do some trainings outside. Don full gear with scba's and put up 3 stage ladders and climb it with a hand tool of some sort. We need to be prepared for the cold and need to get used to it. And othertimes we have an scba training by closing all the lights in the station and put on our fog machine and do search and rescue with either a victim or a downed fire fighter. It's good training and fun.
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Permalink Reply by Fireyladd - Retired Chief Sharp on
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Interesting. Actually this last Monday night we did just that. We use "skull Seasions" to get our people thinking and discussing what they would do for scenario based drills. Skull seasions is a purchased book that has many different scenario's. We assign one per each group. They then work through the key issues of the scenario, discussing it and looking at response concearns. Then from there they discuss opperations leval actual response. The key with to this is to work in small groups (builds team dynamics and gets people together) to atchieve mitigation steps and process. Its also important to have designated members of each group to keep the discussion going and work to involve even the most shy or quiet members in the process. The group then comes back to the whole big group and presents their findings and this now involves the dept in the discussion. We have found this extremely valuable in bringing out polocy issues and SOG that apply to these scenarios. Good stuff!!!!
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Permalink Reply by Reg Mathis on
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One of my favs is the blindfolded SCBA tank swapout. It's easy until you get to the re-connecting the high pressure hose! I have the DAMNDEST time getting the threads lined up!!
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