On Wednesday night’s Firefighter Netcast, Chris Naum hosted “Looking Forward through the Rearview Mirror”. The idea of the show was to discuss the significant events that affected the Fire Service in 2010 and what was needed in 2011.

While there is/has always been a need for us to “Master our Craft” and know as much about our enemy (the fire, the building, the smoke) as possible, some factors do exist that make it difficult to gain the experience necessary.

Fire Duty is down. Maybe not everywhere, but even the busy departments/companies are not fighting fires like they did 30 or even 20 years ago. It is difficult to gain actual experience (reading conditions, knowing when to stay, knowing when to go) on the training ground. In the same breath, the fire service has never had so many tools, like the internet, to help bridge the experience training gap.

Fires are different. “It ain’t your daddy’s fire service”, well really “these ain’t your daddy’s building fires.” The building industries desire to build it faster, bigger, cheaper has but the fire service in the position of often losing the battle before the first 911 call is made. Combine that factor with the use of plastics, resins and other fuels (furnishings) and we have our work cut out for us. Especially if we are not fighting fires as often as often as we used to.

Read the rest here......

http://backstepfirefighter.com/2010/12/30/the-2011-firefighter/