With each fire report that is published, whether by NIOSH or an individual department, an alarming trend is coming to light. This position may be a bit controversial, but it seems as though the fire service is doing a bad job at preparing its personnel to operate in a hostile environment. Across the country firefighters are running into trouble inside burning buildings and then fail to act in a manner consistent with their survival.

But is it their fault? Or is it a result of their training?

Perhaps we need to change our training direction a bit. Certainly many of the outside instructors offer great training that focuses on topics or skills necessary to be a good firefighter. Many departments put together great in house training programs as well. But there also exists a “disconnect” as Bill Carey puts it, between how we train and what we do on the street. This disconnect seems to be the root cause of many of the injuries and deaths we read about.

With a decrease in fire duty there is a need to provide realistic training for our firefighters. While it is impossible to reproduce actual fire conditions, in terms of heat and to some degree smoke, if we allow our firefighters to perform as if there is a difference between training fires and the real thing, we will get the learned behavior every time. “Play like your practice”, we hear it time and time again. The problem is, we are doing just that.

Read the rest and share your comments by following the link below:

http://backstepfirefighter.com/2011/03/04/but-we-train-all-the-time/