The Fire Scene: A Serious Training Program

There always is a lot of discussion about training, and the subject deserves it. After working 47 years in the fire service in four departments in numerous ranks, I have a genuine appreciation for the topic.

Discussing training with firefighters from across the country has revealed an array of regimens and programs. Some career departments simply state that training should be every shift. Many volunteer companies conduct an evening training once per week.

Whatever the current training level is in your department or company, I’m sure there’s room to enhance it.

Training quantified
One of the first ideas that I like to promote about training is the ability of the department to measure or monitor the amount of training that’s conducted. I believe that any required training that isn’t actively monitored eventually will slow down or disappear.

Mostly, the company officer conducts a majority of the training. In a career department, whether there are three firehouses or 30, a battalion chief or other officer probably is charged with stopping by to ensure that the training is being conducted. That said, how does a battalion chief know when to stop by during training?

For many years in FDNY, the chief called the company at the start of the shift to arrange with the officer a time for the visit, and the unit certainly would be training at that time. What about the other units in the battalion? If they didn’t get that call, would they be training? FDNY solved this problem with a change to the training routine. The department established a training period for each shift, and the chief simply had to arrive at the selected company at that selected time, and they were expected to be conducting a drill.

Frequency
Two more questions that concern training are how much training should be conducted and by whom? How much is an easy question, because the answer is every shift. Yes, every shift. Company officers of career departments should be training their people every time that they work a shift.

More importantly, the department should require it.

The requirement for volunteer companies should be at least one evening per week. Some units have a drill night on Tuesday evenings. For any volunteer who can’t attend that drill because of work or other commitments, there’s another session on Saturday mornings.

Beyond company-level
Another important question asks, “Is company training all that’s required?” For an effective and complete training program, training should be conducted at several different levels by different trainers.

Good in-house career unit training by the company officer is the first level of training. That training is conducted by different officers on different shifts or on different training nights for volunteer departments.

The next level is a broader program that provides the same training for the entire company. So, in addition to the company officer selecting the topic for and conducting a one-hour drill each shift, the unit captain should see to it that several drills are conducted on all shifts each month or quarter, so all members receive the same message and are instructed on the same skill.

The third level is departmentwide. The department should develop and conduct training at its training facility or at each firehouse. The department training staff or officer should cover topics that aren’t included routinely in company-level training.

A unified approach
A quality training program includes much more than the basic in-house drills on the apparatus floor. When company officers, unit commanders and the training staff work together under the direction of the chiefs or command staff, a much more effective and broad-based program results, which produces a more professional and productive department workforce.