This is truly fire training up close and personal; no chance to hide, but plenty of opportunity to work on shortcomings and enforce strengths. Our favorite sports teams always review tape of their performance and/or their opponents tape to better handle their approach and game plan. So why don’t we do this more in the fire service?
Similar to the sports world, it is important to review the X’s and O’s when it comes to fire operations. We have a very difficult opponent that we have to routinely face; we should review how we go about facing that opponent, and make sure we have people in the right place performing the right skill. This tactic can improve on scene operations as well as enhance your abilities to provide feedback and allow for firefighters to see and understand their performance.
As we know, training is at the base of everything we do. Just about everything in the fire service is based on knowledge and training and built from the ground up. We have been doing great in many different facets and creative ways to improve training over the years, but we can always improve. One opportunity to improve is enhancing your training with video-based training. This can especially be effective for small group- and company-based training.
For an example, let’s take a car fire training drill. Your department or company is using the demo to practice fire attack and operations for your drill night topic. You have the back parking lot blocked off and are ready to run different evolutions utilizing (likely) a one engine response and a crew to deploy a hoseline and attack the car fire. As your crews go through the scenarios, a huge assist to the training officer would be to have a video camera set up on a tripod to record each evolution. Simply hitting the record button on and off between each scenario will allow you some great opportunity to capture terrific training opportunities.
Don't Leave It On The Camera
The feedback provided in between or at the conclusion of the training is important for firefighters. Typically it is beneficial to encourage the productive and safe tactics, as well as address any shortcomings and offer tactical advice on how to improve any shortcomings. But where you can take this advice to the next level is by using the recorded training. Whether it is towards the end of the training night or before another training event, roll some tape for your firefighters. Walk through the video and take the opportunity for the whole group to see what different crews did and why. This also gives you a more reinforced opportunity to show effective and safe tactics. On a typical drill night, as most of us know, not everyone is paying attention at all times. Some good moments get missed by those who are in the midst of their training time. This opportunity gives you a chance to have the whole group see and understand what you are looking for on this type of incident.
The ability to enhance and reinforce your feedback is a big piece to video-based training. The tape does not lie! It will give clear feedback on some skills, whether good or bad. When a training officer or instructor gives feedback to firefighters it can sometimes be lost or not fully interpreted, or wrongly perceived. While it might be, and should be, good feedback for the firefighter to use, that same feedback, coupled with the firefighter being able to see it, can enhance their learning and understanding of the skill and concepts you are trying to reinforce or drill into them. And, just as important, the area they are lacking in skill or need help on can sometimes be difficult for a training officer to properly or fully explain in words. If they have video to show while describing the areas for improvement (or the reinforcement of good skill practice), it may help the firefighters understand better and more clearly.
Location Matters
This approach may not work in all situations. A live fire evolution or heavy smoke situation may provide poor footage that does not allow for opportunity to give feedback. In addition, with larger-scale training events there is typically a lot of things going on and it can be difficult to focus in on individual skills and/or individual crews performing skills. But there are a lot of training subjects where you can use this: vehicle fires, vehicle extrication, timed water supply/pump operations, vertical ventilation, forcible entry, etc. Typically, it is with the single-skill drills versus a large-scale training event. The single-skill concept allows for more focused attention on one item versus a long list of many different tactics and events going on during training ground operations.
If we are back to the car fire training scenario from before, you would want some kind of vantage point that allows you to see everything you want to capture. Positioning the engine, getting out of the truck, deployment of the hoseline, etc. are all important pieces to a real-life car fire scenario. You would want to make sure to capture these items as part of the overall review and training process. These steps are just as important as putting actual water on the fire.
If nothing else, it is simply another tool for the training officer to review and provide feedback to enhance improvement and improved understanding of the training concepts. Maybe it will work for some training drills and maybe not for others. So, you set it up with all the good intentions in the world. Even if it was not conducive for that drill or for the firefighters who participated, all you lose is some video memory, which can be deleted quickly, and a little of your time. But on the other hand, it gives you an added tool in your toolbox to better prepare your firefighters and reinforce the importance of the basics and effective tactics.
Firefighters and fire departments strive to get better with each drill and each call to which we respond. The use of video-based training can be a beneficial step for you and your department with your training program. The assistance it can give individual firefighters is huge because it allows for easy-to-see reinforcement or proof of a need for constructive feedback. I would recommend departments try this step for some drills, not all. It is definitely a viable option for the basics and specifically for individual skill drills.
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DAVID BROSNAHAN is a battalion chief with the Roseville, MN, Fire Department and his primary role is the coordination of the day-to-day operations. Brosnahan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hamline University and a graduate certificate in Public Health Emergency Response from the University of Minnesota. He is a certified fire instructor, Live Burn 1403 instructor and a fire instructor with Hennepin Technical College teaching NFPA 1001 and Live Burn training. You can contact him by email: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at: @dwbraz.
