The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
When will we learn
Once again I read about a European conutry having a large scale drill. This time is was France and italy having a drill in a tunnel to TEST thier binational response agreement...WOW.
I'm not talking about Mayberry FD and Mt Pilot VFD getting together, we're talking countries. Why can't we do this in America. Recently Chicago had a large scale drill to verify communications. Illinois and Indiana departments were involved. But in the 9 years since 9-11 this has been the only large scale drill in the country.
In Delaware we have a nuclear plant across the river. Not once has there been a drill or a meeting with responding agencies. Why not? If there was a large scale incident in your area how many units would be needed. Were would they come from, do they know how to get there etc etc. When I say large scale. Over 100 injuries, multi alarm fires and several incidents going on at once. Doesn't even have to be terrorism. How about a train running with a hot wheel sending sparks for miles along its route before its detected. Happened here, luckily it only covered 3 jurisidictions. But it required over 45 coompanies, some from as far away as 2 hours.
Why don't we have more of these drills?
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
-
Bottom line is that it comes down to money. It is expensive to put on such a drill, for many places there is OT to be paid for backfill of stations (you can't leave your area uncovered), there is OT for other resources like if special teams are used, let alone outside resources like power/gas companies, engineers, private companies like if cranes are needed, etc. Then there is a huge cost for logistics like fuel, food, disposable goods like lumber, and so forth.
What good is identifying a problem like upgrading communication systems, when the money which could upgrade such system is pissed away on another drill....which in turn identifies communition systems need upgrading.
What good is learning something like communication systems need to be upgraded when the money which could be used to upgrade is pissed away on another drill which once again highlights communication systems need upgrading?
Then you are talking an incident about 2 countries....yeah and? Ever ask depts on the border of U.S. and Canada about interoperability? Ever ask if Niagara Falls, NY and Niagara Falls, ON ever train together for incidents affecting both? Yeah, this may be a large scale training between two countries, but just being 2 different countries can be a coincidence.
Now, I would agree much can be learned from such drills, but lets also look at things realistically. Cost is and will always be the biggest factor to do such a drill. Why should such immense costs consistently be incurred and many of the same issues identified? Whereas, many things can be learned from such drills and that information can be taken back and trained on with an individual dept or even area in a more controlled, less costly environment.
Large scale drills are nice once and awhile, but aren't always needed. Much of what we do on a smaller level can be expanded if need be. We have a nuclear plant close to us as well, our HAZMAT team did some training there, but there hasn't been a wide scale drill. Why, because if something happened, we know what to do because of our current training. We know we will fall into the Incident Action Plan and will follow orders. We don't need to have some large scale drill involving all sorts of depts and have all sorts of costs for something that for the most part, will see a lot of standing around.
Information we have learned from actual incidents and even drills has been taken back and incorporated on a smaller scale. Much of the challenges and issues faced can be applied on smaller scale and inversely smaller issues can be trained on a larger scale. This is why we have NIMS and training in stuff like WMDs etc.....so we don't have to incur additional costs for large scale training, when we just really fit into a certain span of control within the chain of command.
What good is identifying a problem like upgrading communication systems, when the money which could upgrade such system is pissed away on another drill....which in turn identifies communition systems need upgrading?
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
