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I know I for one, as an officer, always have trouble coming up with a unique learning drill! I'm hoping in this group firefighters will come together with their experiences to give ideas to others!

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Permalink Reply by ee779 on October 16, 2007 at 10:24pm

Ok, up our way cold weather is comming soon so, one thing we do for in house training is send each person to the engine or squad to retrive a tool or adapter when each has one in hand we have them explain what it is and what it is used for (this works very well with juniors) obviously it helps everyone learn where everything is and can be fun. Another "indoor" training we do is airpack donning races (another fun but usefull practice) especially for those getting ready for the FF1 test

Permalink Reply by Captain Jenner on October 17, 2007 at 4:06pm

Both are great ideas! The first one sounds like a good way to have probies learn to recognize tools and know what they are used for.

Permalink Reply by Chris C. on October 17, 2007 at 6:07pm

basement rescue or basement RIT .....because more & more people are getting finished basements & bring some one up stairs is harder then taking them down...let a lone a your follow Bro or sis firefigher.

Permalink Reply by Captain Jenner on October 17, 2007 at 11:57pm

That's a great idea. We should have a house to "play" with soon, so this would make an excellent training practice.

Permalink Reply by Robert Owens on October 22, 2007 at 4:16pm

Some good training ideas that we use are:
Blidfolded glove drills: blind fold the new person have them don there gloves and then hand them items to identify or tie knots whatever. I hate when someone has to take there gloves off to perform a task.

Whats in your pockets drill?: have everyone on your crew show what they carry and explain why they carry it. Eveyone learns something from this drill

Setting up RIT: alot of times when we train RIT we think firefighter rescue only very few train on proper tool selection, placement of people, etc. are you going to be an "Active RIT"?

Portable Master Streams: Pretty self explanatory. Everyone knows how to use the deck gun while its on the engine but what about when it has to be stretched away from it. How does it come off, what line to do we supply it with, who grabs the hose, the gun, the tools. This can also lead into leader line training.

Lost FF Drill: you need a structure for this one. You are seperated from your crew blind and low on air you properly call a mayday describing your problem to the IC etc. The Ic informs you that an RIT is on the way.....Now what. Do you wait? Do you try and get out? If you try and get out how do you get out?
We did this drill with all 600 of our guys in a large commercial occupancy and the results were astonding. People could not give good may day reports, activate there pass, activate there emergency button on there portable, etc. you name it it happened. Tim Sendlebach from Savhana SP? Georgia introduced this drill to us its a keeper.

Also look at traiing websites like
www.Firefighterclosecalls.com they have weekley drills
www.fireuptraining.com
www.firenuggets.com
http://batt5a.blogspot.com/
www.vententersearch.com

hope this helps

Permalink Reply by Heather Langston on October 23, 2007 at 9:53am

Great idea!

When we are out doing Pre-Incident Plans or checking our hydrants, we often stop by houses and other buildings under construction and take a look around. Its great for getting the crew familiar with building construction in general and the structures in our area.

Also, we sometimes get geared up, black out masks and have the guys 'search' the station. Yeah they should be familiar, but we move everything around. That way they have to rely more on proper search technique.

Beyond that, we have a library of American Heat and other training videos.

Permalink Reply by Robert Owens on October 23, 2007 at 1:22pm

For a short time only Penwell Publishing is selling VHS training tapes for $5. They have the Bread and Butter Series and many more its worth looking at.

Permalink Reply by Fire-Fighter-Exam on October 25, 2007 at 7:15pm

Lots of good ideas here. If you want to go back to the basics and just train on regular firefighter questions firehouse has a monthly quiz or you could subscribe to a site like www.fire-fighter-exam.com for thousands of test questions. Its good for getting people ready for FF1 tests.

Permalink Reply by ee779 on October 29, 2007 at 12:57am

I don't know if your coverage area has a good hydrant system or not. Both of the companies I run with are exact opposites, one has an outstanding system with 15 - 27 inch mains. The other has 6 or 7 dry hydrants but mostly drafts from ponds. Once every few months we organize a combined training, one in town the other in the township. this way both are ready incase we get called for mutual aide.

Permalink Reply by Randy Macey on October 29, 2007 at 7:46am

For us up in the north, we will be packing it in. And start doing more training inside, than out.
One that everyone enjoys is "Simulator 6" you can take pictures of places in your area. With
Simulator 6 you can add smoke and flames and set it up in stages. From the time the call comes
in and add more smoke in flames. This helps out in two ways, it gives a picture to deal with as
well it gives everyone a pre-plan on where and how to set up. Computer and Power point are your
tools, if you don't have a power point then computer is just as good.

Also we set it up as crews, each crew has a radio. This also teaches, paint a picture in point form.
We do not need to hear a story on the radio. We have another crew in a room who judge them.
Making sure that everyone is hitting the bench marks at the call and using the radio correctly.

Afterwards, we review and explain how things can improve on what was preformed. This is a training
where we try and do it as though we where actually there. It can also be done as a table talk, what would work and what will not work. Then move on to a full "What would you do".

Permalink Reply by Jeff Betz on November 2, 2007 at 10:25pm

I guess I have some ideas, but the one that comes to mind for the "inside" training days is one I did for our full-time duty shifts. It could easily be adapted for paid-on-call folks also. I took an initial fire attack response and developed a one-page list of thought processes that the different FF's would be thinking. Then we discussed them one at a time and compared them to what the others had in mind. As an example, the IC's point of view, the lead engineer, the attack FF's, the 2nd engine (our hydrant engine), and the truck operator (1 guy usually). With our limited manpower, it was really interesting to talk about our differing views for the same response. It was intended to open each others eyes to the jobs we all have to do and be more understanding of each others situations. It went over REALLY WELL. They wanted to know who I stole it from. We then looked at some initial arrival photos of fires on the net, and covered the same discussion for each one (single family, garden apt's, high rise etc.) If you would like to see the format, let me know.

Permalink Reply by Joe Brooks on November 12, 2007 at 2:16am