What If........

Well, here I am and I must admit it is a bit surreal. I am proud to be a part of this blogging community and the fire service leaders that provide information and opinion here. I simply love the fire service and enjoy and feel obligated to passing it on to others. I am no expert, just a student of the fire service.

Most of my posts will be about training issues, which is my passion. As a training officer, I am frequently looking to incorporate operations into training needs and many times these ideas come from reading other news stories or blogs that sparks an idea. My primary goal is to make the basics the core of every training we conduct.

My approach to training, as is the fire service and that is "what if"? We must prepare for the inevitable "what ifs" that are going to happen at some point. Fire happens! We must expect and train for fire!

What if we don't repeatedly deploy hose lines during training? What if we don't repeatedly make our people wear packs and be on air during evolutions? What if we don't let our people conduct evolutions like a fire scene? What if during a hose deployment drill one member's low air alarm goes off and we just let him take the regulator off to finish the evolution?

What will happen is that our firefighters will get to the fire slower and expending more energy than necessary. They will not be used to operating with the bulk and weight of their SCBA in extreme conditions. Firefighters will become complacent at training and therefor will be complacent on the fire ground. When that low air alarm activates on a real call they will panic and they will revert to the habits created in training.

We must train like we play and we must require mastering the basic skills required to operate efficiently and effectively on the fire ground. As we train and practice our skills, we must keep in mind the "what if" behind every reason of what we do.

Take care, thanks for reading and keep training.

Jason