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should certs be excepted from one state to another?
I moved to another state about a year ago ( north to south ). Ive been in the fire service for 20 years. My first fire dept. made sure that we re-certified every year on scba and extrication. My new dept is making me go through everything again and its kind of frustraiting. Im still not scba certified after a year and thats after i took firefighter one agian. They wouldnt except any of my states certs and im sure there of much higher standard. I even have two years of college under my belt in fire science. Any suggestions?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Louis A. Coletti on
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Hey Jason:
Based on the fact that reciprocity in other states does not always happen as we may expect it should, have shown that each state feels that they are better and qualifications for firefighter are far more stringent. I have challenged the state boards in EMS and Firefighter with great success, but all in account that I needed to prove that my education and training far exceeded the basics.
Most states will allow you to appeal to the Bureau of Fire Standards and Training, the states Department of Insurance or see if your training is accredited by IFSAC. This will give you a small avenue to trace.
Louis
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Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on
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Since they've made EMT-B a National Standard, I think the time has come for all 50 States to develop a standard for Fire Service certifications. I predict that this will happen within the next 10 years. We've seen the advent of NIMS, it sems like the logical next step would be a national standard for FF certs.
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Permalink Reply by Robert Owens on
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Yes as long as it meets the NFPA standard then it should be accepted.
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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on
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Here in Oz, we have nationally accreditted training- this mean that training undertaken in SCBA (For example) in one state is recognised in other states.
That doesn't mean we have to automatically have to accept your cert- we can still challenge test you or similar, and I believe we should. There's a lot of certificate forgery happening all over the world.
What it does mean, is that everyone Australia wide has been taught to the same standard or benchmark.
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Now if we could learn from Australia and adopt that here in the U.S...
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Permalink Reply by jason on
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I thank all of your comments and yell have very good points. I agree that each dept. should make that firefighter proof they are certified by taking an exam or simply putting on a pack and going through a training evolution or both.
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Thanks Brian- it's not perfet and still has issues with it, but overall it's an OK system
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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on
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From time to time, we enlist a member with previous firefighting experience from another department. Many times (especially if they are from another county) we give them a probation period during which they are watched under different conditions, just to make sure they "measure up."
Measuring up means that the individual is not only proficient in the basic skills, but also shows a desire to become a part of the team. Most importantly, we look to see that the person will not abandon his/her partners in crisis situations while doing interior attack.
I'm sure many of us know or have known people whose walls are full of training certificates, whom we wouldn't want to be anywhere NEAR the fire or patient when the going gets interesting.
Jason, I wouldn't take it personally; it sounds like your new department is very thorough and, after all, isn't that what you would want?
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