Fire Dept Training activities

[Kirk]

I thought I would start a post on different training activities that Vol Fire Dept do on training night. Let me know if this is worth while. I don't like to reinvent the wheel, and if anone has other ideas,,, lets see them.

Materials:
o Ppe and scba

Activity:
Take all the trucks out of the firehall.
On a salvage tarp, get the firefighters to layout the scba’s and go thru a little education on the device. Teams will then get dresses in PPE and don and doff the scba. Once they have put it on and off a couple of times, pick up the pace to see if members can don just the scba in under 75 seconds. Practice this a few times to build up confidence and speed.

Limitations: In all likelihood there will be more members than scba’s. If this is the case have the other members don and doff their PPE several times. Once they have put it on and off a couple of times, pick up the pace to see if members can don just the PPE in under 75 seconds. Practice this a few times to build up confidence and speed.

If there is still time at night, take 2 members and have them put on a scba on air with the facepiece blackened out. Spin them around to disorient them and then put one member in one end of a truck bay, and the other member in the center of the another bay. They must find each other and then find their way out of the firehall.

Teams will be timed

[iamvff]

Great idea,(this post) I have elected myself to be in charge of making sure we do more training in 2005, and I will look forward to some great new idea's.

Story for ya...Myself and another member set up a small mock crash at our local dump with a couple of old vehicles a couple of years ago. We had it all set up with 911 to do a page at 6:15pm that night (no one else new that it was going to happen, but the firechief). At about 6:10, we drove half way out and waited for the page to see how long the trucks would take. Guess what...at 6:14(not a lie) the pagers went off and 911 called us to a fire alarm at the old folks lodge in town, at 6:15, they still went ahead with our mock page. WOW, talk about having to make decisions quick...it worked out well, we covered both calls(lodge was a false alarm), and we had a great training evening, with several unexpected lessons being learned.

A little off topic, but thanks for the time,
Be safe
iamvff

[Kirk]

Great story, Please post some of your training activities and we will get this post rocking
Kirk

[Rescue78]

Gee Kirk,

I wonder where you got that idea ;) :)

Have a good training year.

Rescue78 (Claude)

[wilderness]

make a rescue randy from old 2.-1/2" hose
now take a traffic cone and place it 70 ft from the fire truck
now also get a sledge hammer and a heavy piece of wood
now also get one length of 1-1/2"x50' hose

Now what we do is we start at the back of the pumper and run the 70' till we reach the sledge hammer and piece of wood we hit it 10 times or till it slides 5 feet.
Now place the sledge on the piece of wood and run back to the pumper and do 10 push ups then grab the length of hose and drag it till it reaches its maximum distance approx 48 ' now open the charged line and knock oover the traffic cone, place the nozzle on the ground and then proceed over and grab the rescue randy and drag him back to the pumper the traffic cone should also be placed 70' from the truck as well as rescue randy... its easier then it looks all the while you should be using an SCBA.....
also look for a book called VOLUNTEER TRAINING DRILLS (A YEAR OF WEEKLY DRILLS) Howard A. Chatterton

[Rescue78]

Wilderness

While that drill is pretty good from a fitness point of view, I have a feeling that if Kirk as a training officer would anounce that drill for his weekly training, it would go over like a fart in church.

I like it though. Keeps your people in shape and works task specific muscles.

[wilderness]

It's great we make time trials and try and beat our previous time....

[Kirk]

I should have figured it was you rescue 78 by the way you spelled a french version of a word back in an earlier post.....
Good 2 yak at ya again...

Great training ideas should be shared. And that above idea was definatly one. You are correct, I did not come up with it on my own, but I looked it over and there is no copyright on it as of yet... HA :D
The great thing about being the training officer is that I can use wildernesses (sp?) idea and the guys have to do it. :D ;) Of course, I do want to make training fun and enjoyable, and if the staff learn something while doing it, perfect, my job here is done.


Here is another training idea that I came across either at firehall or firehouse . com. I can't remember which. Either way it woeks well.

Create a maze in the hall using 5 lengths of charged redskin hose. Each of the 3 bays will have a complete maze in it with the lines exiting the building thru the man door. Teams of 2 will be disoriented (spun around) and then be required to follow the hose out of the building

Amatures train till they get it right, Professionals train till they can't get it wrong

[iamvff]

Hey Kirk,

Yesterday we organized an SCBA training day for the dept. Refresher for the older guys, and training for the newer. It went over very well I think. We have 20 guys on the Dept, and we had about 12 or 13 show up for the day! Thats pretty good I think. Our day went like this:
Started at 9am, met at the firehall and laid out the 3 different styles of airpacs we have (MSA, Draggar, and some old scotts). The instructor spent the morning just talking about the different styles of airpacs, maintenance, donning, doffing, changing bottles, etc. We had guys try on the airpacs, pointed out the issues and common mistakes (eg: balaclava's under the straps of the facemask, etc) showed the system of helping your buddy be in his gear properly, discussed theory of going through a structure, etc. Had some lunch (BBQed burgers and pop, and a 45 minute bull session, always fun!) and then went out to Agricore United's heated Chemical shed and did search and rescue for a couple hours (thanks to them, they were more then happy to let us be out there). Our instructor was a fella from Virden Fire Dept. We were'nt looking for a certified course. Just something to give us some training in real life situations, not reading from a text. It wasn't an overbearing course, it was all pretty much hands on, and I think everyone really enjoyed it. Just a good, fun day learning the basic airpac stuff. We had all of our newer guys there and I know they appreciated it. We are going to follow it up on our next training night with a little more search and rescue practice, but we will be taping off the masks. (thats always good for a few chuckles)

Be safe,
iamvff

[rescue1008]

i was looking through some web pages out there about other depts. and i thought of a good practice about having a vehicle on the roof and putting one of our members inside and getting hands on practice on getting a person out of a car while flipped on the roof..... Knock on wood we didnt have one of thoses yet... but you never know what could happen lol .. well anyways keep this topic up and full of great ideals.


And remember folks " KEEP DOWN AND BE SAFE "

Rescue1008 :cool:

[Kirk]

Great idea iamvff and rescue1008

Rather than use tape on your mask, we stuff paper towel inside it to black out the mask,, It works well for us.

rescue1008, great idea, but I wonder how to geet a "volunteer" so sit in the car strapped in upside down,, Hmmm. might have to offer a scoobie snack.HA

What do you guys for for pumper, or nozzle control or hose training? Do you do simulations, relays, speed drills?

Kirk

[heavyduty]

Our last meeting was by far the best I have ever went to. It started of like the usual meetings. After that 2 crews went out in 2 trucks to do address runs. On our second practice run we get a page that there is a snowmobile accident at the creek that runs right through town so both trucks respond. When we get there sure enough it looks like they collided and there are two patiens laying there in the snow. So we slide down the bank, which was glare ice, when we finaly get them loaded onto the stokes baskets we pull them up the bank. Once both patients were on the bank one of the captains said ,ok unstrap them, everybody looks at him and says what. So after a little bit of pursauding we unstrap them and the get up. We had been had, the whole sceniario had been set up from the start. Only the captains and the deputy cheif knew so it was a real call for the rest of us. Now that is training, I will tell you it is sure a good way to tell how people will react to a real call.

[iamvff]

I know what were doing soon!!

Great training excercise! thanks

Be safe
iamvff

[heavyduty]

You have to keep it a secret, man my adrenaline was pumping until we found out.

[iamvff]

We did one something similar to that a few years ago, had it all set up with 911 to make the call at 7:15pm. At 7:14pm we had a real page come across the beepers, they followed it with our mock page at 7:15pm. Boy we learned how to scramble that night. fortunately the real page ended up just being a false alarm at the lodge, so we had both pages covered and all went well.

Be safe,
iamvff

[DFCSmash]

Originally posted by iamvff
We did one something similar to that a few years ago, had it all set up with 911 to make the call at 7:15pm. At 7:14pm we had a real page come across the beepers, they followed it with our mock page at 7:15pm. Boy we learned how to scramble that night. fortunately the real page ended up just being a false alarm at the lodge, so we had both pages covered and all went well.

Be safe,
iamvff

Hmmm, someone forgot to tell 911 to hold the mock page? I am thinking that when the 7:15 came in there was a very red face under one helmet? :D

[pitter19]

Hello guys
Thanks for the great ideas. I want use them all. I would like to add that when we do SCBA, we always make the guys go through a 1ft tall by 2 1/2 ft wide opening blacked out. This makes the Firefighter take of his pack slide through the opening and put his pack back on. We find with the young guys this is a real eyeopener and they start to spend alot more time learning the SCBA. Another scenario is we do the same but at somepoint we have a crew laydown and set off their man down alarms. This of course we then throw together a RIT team,and we see how the guys react.

Thanks again for the great ideas Pitter

[wilderness]

We are lucky here in Whitwater Stn #3 has a maze made up in the loft.... its got doors and a room and stairs..... its great you crawl around in a black out masked and you have to find your way thru it... after you have searched the first floor you have a trap door you must crawl up into and then procee down a hall, and they have hose and wires hanging down and the odd old tire you must either lift or push out of the way...sometimes depending who is working you thru the course, they hook a little rope to your pack and let you go maybe four feet and then you relize your stuck and then you turn get wrapped up in it... really stops and makes you think... they have even rented it out to full time department...its something we got that they don,t....one for the vollies lmao......

[iamvff]

Originally posted by DFCSmash
Hmmm, someone forgot to tell 911 to hold the mock page? I am thinking that when the 7:15 came in there was a very red face under one helmet? :D

We were waiting half way to the mock, to see how the response time was when the first page went off. We didn't have a fleetnet with us to call 911 and the other guys didn't know about the mock at 7:15. The firechielf new though, so he sent some to one call and the rest to the other. Live and learn...next time we'll take a fleet net with us. Thats what these things are all about......learning!

be safe
iamvff

[ssifire]

You guys may want to watch yourselves with the 911 page-outs. If one of your members, or even worse a member of the public gets hurt while you response to a mock emergency, your @$$ will see a lawsuit faster than you can organize a one car parade! Any mock scenario have dispatch announce "response to a mock" mva, or structure fire, or car fire, etc.

I agree scenario based training is by far the best way to keep things lively around the hall, but just keep your butt covered as well.

[BuffaloFart]

If you can't make a whole maze, learning about getting your ba unsnared can be easy and fun with this kind of box setup (see picture). You can see that this box (which any department could make) is part of a larger scba training playground. It's true what you said about making the guys think about how easy it is to get in trouble in your ba. 10% of it is learning how to do something... 90% is just an attitude adjustment.