What are we going to do for drill night this month?
What training officer hasn’t pondered that question in anticipation of an upcoming training session? As the old adage goes, “You don’t plan to fail, you fail to plan.”
With some basic planning and training session management you can put those worries behind you.
I’m not talking about a plan for the day of training. Rather, you need to have a strategic training plan that covers a complete year. Sound daunting? Well it doesn’t have to be, so let’s take a look at putting one together.
First, there’s a difference between training and drilling. Training is any activity where personnel are acquiring new knowledge and skills. Drilling is any activity where personnel are putting acquired knowledge and skills to use to develop mastery of the skills.
4 areas of service
Most departments are providing first responder-level services to their communities in four fields: fire protection and suppression, EMS, hazardous materials response, and technical rescue.
These are four major areas for which your personnel need training. With that, divide the calendar year into four training quarters. Focus training and drilling efforts on one of those major disciplines each quarter.
Let’s take one of the quarters and break it down to the tactical level. If your department has a training drill on the second and fourth Thursday each month, that gives you six training sessions per quarter.
If you make fire protection and suppression the focus of the first training quarter, you’re training schedule might look something like this.
January training night 1
- Quick review of department policy and procedure regarding use of PPC and SCBA.
- Practice procedure for conducting inspection of SCBA.
- Practice proper donning and doffing of PPC and SCBA.
- Practice procedure for managing a malfunctioning regulator and emergency air transfill.
- Review of procedure for the cleaning and storage of PPC and SCBA.
January training night 2: Response scenario drills (working in two-person teams)
- Properly don PPC and SCBA.
- Receive a task assignment from incident commander, e.g., advance a 1¾-inch attack line to side C of the fire station.
- Following completion of task, properly doff PPC and SCBA.
- Depending upon the available time and number of personnel participating, you can incorporate any number of tasks covering hose advances, ladder practices, tool retrieval, etc.
February training night 1
- Attack line hose practices and supply line practices.
February training night 2
- Drills on above subject matter.
March training night 1
- Review of fire protection systems including sprinklers, standpipes, alarms, and troubleshooting problems with each.
March training night 2
- Drills on the above subject matter.
Blending training and drilling
Setting up such a plan for your department helps ensure that your members get a good mix of both training and drilling. Both are important, even in a busy department, because over time it is human nature to forget information and forget how to carry out tasks safely, effectively and efficiently.
There’s never been a better time in our history to be a training officer because of the vast number of resources that exist on the Internet. You can easily locate teaching outlines and PowerPoint presentations, videos and tactical simulations — many of which you can customize for your local needs.
Here are some examples.
- FireRescue1 training videos.
- FirefighterCloseCalls.com Weekly Drills.
- YouTube.com, firefighter drills.
Use the Incident Command System to manage your drill activities and your people will be getting two for the price of one: the skills practice of the drills and the practice of working within an ICS structure like the one that’s used on emergency incidents.
Along with the ICS structure, create an example incident action plan that contains, at a minimum a site map for the exercise; the goals and objectives for the exercise; and a safety message for the exercise.
Befriend social media
Social media tools like Twitter and Facebook can provide the training officer with some outstanding communication tools to increase member attendance and involvement with your training and drilling program.
You can use Twitter for internal marketing of your training to the members. Send out Tweets to notify members of upcoming topics, times and dates; changes in the training schedule; and cancellation of training dates when necessary.
You can use your department’s Facebook page to post information regarding an upcoming training event; what should they study beforehand; what equipment do they need to bring; what’s going to be covered during the training event; and the incident action plan for the upcoming event.
After the training event, post pictures from the event on your department’s Facebook page. Those who attended will appreciate the recognition — who doesn’t like seeing themselves doing firefighter stuff — and they can share photos with their friends on Facebook. Members who were not in attendance will get to see what they missed — a potential motivator for them to make the next one.
The training officer should be a key leadership position in any department, big or small. The military adage: “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat” applies to the fire service.
Careful planning will keep your volunteer firefighters sweating more and bleeding less.
