Our department recently decided to issue all cubbies (probationary firefighters) bright yellow uniform tee shirts instead of the navy blue shirts. This is to prevent them from wearing them in not so good places in public or letting their friends wear them. For years we have made them wear yellow turn out gear (regular firefighters are black) so that is how the yellow shirts came up.
My department doesn't do anything uniform wise but on the fire ground all probies wear orange helmets whereas firefighters wear red. If your on rescue(EMS)probation u have an "R" on the side and fire probation has a "FR" on the side.
Nope except a red helmet which is suppose to tell command officers that this person can not participate in active supression. They can assist afterwards but other than that they have to stay outside.
So, you get a guy that comes over to your department with 15 years of experience. Is he still a probie for you? Does he have to be subjected to the yellow monkey suits? Have you considered putting a big bulls-eye on the back of the coats?
Why would you make the conscious effort to SEPARATE the probies from the rest when the whole idea is to get everyone to work together?
I know; you want to distinguish them from the others, so you can show them more attention, make them safer than the rest, humiliate them when they screw up and make them more noticeable at the BIG one.
If I did anything at all, it would be to issue a different color helmet or sticker for the helmet, but everything else would be the same including their indoctrination.
IMHO.
We do yellow helmets for probies. FF of probation are black. Cap's are red. Chiefs are white.
Yellow helmets make them stand out on the fireground so we can keep better tabs on em. Probies also are not issued badges, and do not have their names on their turnouts. (everyone else has their last name sewn onto a velcro thing stuck to the back of their turnout jacket). It's a big deal to get a badge/black helmet and nameplate. Everyone looks alike, there are just subtle differences. Mostly for safety.
Permalink Reply by EL on December 30, 2007 at 5:30pm
Its up to the department to hire guys that arent "handing out shirts in exchange for video games" and its up to us to set an example and help these guys get to know the job not to " keep them away from the fire". Not sure about everyone else on here but my dept encourages inside firefighting. If we want to seperate ourselves from the rookies maybe the part timers should also get shirts that say PART TIME FIREFIGHTER.
We used to issue our Probies yellow helmets which earned them the name "lemonheads". Our FF helmets are black with LT's & Cap's wearing red, Chief officers are white. We stopped the yellow helmet thing last year and now Probies get black helmets with yellow helmet shields that say "Candidate".