Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by torrey9 on May 31, 2009 at 8:49am

You could throw ladders with them, and you could have them do a maze with their face covered, those are some good ideas

Permalink Reply by peaches on May 31, 2009 at 10:07am

i think theres like three million of these threads jus to let u know u might wanna look at some other threads like this to get some good ideas also

Permalink Reply by sean krum on May 31, 2009 at 9:07pm

thanks alot. much appreciated

Permalink Reply by Roy Walker on June 1, 2009 at 1:59am

Sean take a look at some of the fire fighter combat challenge drills. Most of them can be fairly cheaply recreated to some extent with some imagination. You don't have to do them all and may want to do several on different nights. As one example a pair of coveralls can be stuffed and weight added to simulate the drag exercises. Then you may want to expand this idea by practicing different types of carries. Hope this helps any other questions let me know and I'll try to give you some more ideas.

Permalink Reply by Brock Crawford on June 2, 2009 at 7:14pm

This may sound stupid but we begin by going over the trucks as a refresher, then have to name everything in them without looking. Then we all go into our meeting room with a portable while the training officer is in the bays by the truck. He then calls out the station number and gives information on the call and what is needed like the dispatcher does. We have to run up to the bays get our gear on and pull what ever equipment we need of the truck. While were doing that were being timed and have to get it all done in under 5 mintues. We do that over and over switching up what each person does. Once we get the hang of that (its usualy takes about a month to learn what all we would have to do) we move on to changing the bottles in the airpacks. Were expected to be able to change one in 1:00 flat. The fastest i have ever done it was 30 seconds and that was after months of practice. As you train with the same guys you learn who does what best so when you get to a call you can decided on the way that whose hitting the hydrant, who's hooking the lines to the truck, and who is getting equipement and things ready for the guys going in.

Another thing we do is take the trucks out into our parking lot, put on full gear and packs, and practice pulling preconnects. While we have the lines pulled we go over interior operation such as hose patterns, how close you should be to the guy infront of you and most importantly comunication between the attack and search crew, as well as the officer in charge and the person running the engine, and for us its the 2 in 2 out rule. Meaning if 2 guys go in then the same to guys have to come out if something happens or someone panics and has to get out.

Once we get the hang of interior operations we begin to move onto search, mostly what tools the search team is supposed to have, how to search a large diameter room, and to never enter a structure to search for a victim until the attack crew is fighting the fire.

Next we learn about ladder placement and proper use, how to tell if a ladder should be taken out of service, proper placement for ground ladders, (always to the right of the roof ladder if one is being used that way if the roof ladder comes free of the peak the chances of it knocking the ground ladder over are low) and how to tell if a ladder has been placed at the right angle to the structure. (If placed properly you should be able to stand straight up on the bottom rung and your should be able to rap your hands around the run infront of you) Remeber to always ladder all 4 sides of a structure at a window incase the someone from the attack or search crew needs to make a quick escape. Also remember to let the crews know the location of the ladders.

We will then go over ventilation, what tools to have, how to sound a room to see if there are weak spots or the fire is moving under you, and how large of a vent hole should be cut.

The final and easiest thing is overhaul, how to tell if the fire is still burning and where it is burning at. You should be able to hear in moving through walls and cellings as it sounds similar to a train.

Permalink Reply by Keegan Allen on June 3, 2009 at 12:08pm

My department i'm on we do many training things and train on these things over and over again until we understand it. Here are some things we do for training: Search and rescue, which is done in our fire station with no lights, we where airpacks and have to carry all tools our search team would have to use. We go over pumper operations at lease twice a month. We also go over all tools on trucks and hoses. We go over the spraying options, and how to hook up hoses and fill trucks. How to set up rural fires and town fires. We do controlled grass burns with our fire department and people make little donations to our junior fire department fund.