Ever since I was designated as our department’s training officer, I’m always on the look out for new ways to make training sessions “fun” for our members.  I’ve learned that thinking outside the box can lead to some very good training sessions and also help keep the morale up.  Earlier this year I came across a video on you tube that really caught my interest.

The video is of a fire company doing evacuation training on playground equipment.  The video is about 10 mins long but after watching it, I knew it was something I definitely wanted to try with our members.  A week later our members were at a local school with perplexed looks on their faces.  I simply told them that the training was an innovative idea I saw on you tube and we were going to try it.  I had stretched 150’ of 1 ¾” hose through the playground equipment and then placed each member at the nozzle end and instructed them to find their way back to the truck. 

After all was done with that night, the members were absolutely thrilled with this new drill.  There were compliments and comments made over the next couple of weeks about how much they enjoyed the training and wanted to do it again.  With the cooler weather starting to roll in here in the Bluegrass state, I’m thinking it’s time to break out the hose again and head over to the school for a night at the playground.

Here’s the link to the video on you tube, hope everyone enjoys and trys it at their department.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0_fgU3tWPg