By Billy Galvin
Many times in our career in the fire scene, we are pulled out to the training grounds and told to drill on a number of different tasks.
And more often than not, we will see our old friend — the dreaded stopwatch — come out to gauge our speed.
This often leaves me wondering whether we drill too much for speed and not enough for efficiency. Now don’t get me wrong, speed is important, but when our focus is solely on how fast we do things, an important aspect of training is lost. I call this the “salty” aspect of training.
Junior firefighters are told to pull a crosslay and do it fast. But when do we tell them to slow down, catch three sides of the house and get a read on the conditions? This is our profession. We should pull up to a scene, get off the truck with a thousand yard stare, and act like we have been there before. What looks more salty than a crew that pulls up, calmly stretches their lines and gets a read on a house?
It goes back to the old saying, you know, the one about the old bull and the young bull. If we take an extra minute and don’t rush, we might see that a scene runs smoother from start to finish. I know in my career that when I started slowing things down it allowed me to stay calm and be more aware of the situation at hand. So why do we insist on training with a stopwatch?
This is a great debate in many engine houses, and the point that’s always brought up is new guys will never have that “I’ve been here before” look because they just simply have not been there before. That is fine, because we (as senior members or officers) need to understand that we pave the way, and our junior members are a reflection of us and our training habits. If we are calm, they are calm and if we act spastic, then they will act spastic. We need to be that old bull, that calming presence, that voice on scene that says, “Slow down and take a breath.”
This all starts on the training ground. Teach firefighters to stay calm and take the extra minute to do things right. I promise you this if you try it, you’ll like the outcome. I always felt panic on a scene was contagious, but over the years I am learning that calmness is contagious, too. One of my senior members taught me many valuable lessons. One stuck out most.
“When you’re on a good fire, act like there’s a crowd of hot chicks watching your every move.”
It sounds funny now, but it made a ton of sense to a 21-year-old kid. Basically, he was telling me to be cool, act cool and act like I have been there before. And you know what? It worked! He trained a lot of young firefighters that way.
Just give it a chance. Put away that stop watch, lead by example and your department will be all the better for it. Let’s start preaching less about being fast, and more about being calm and efficient. So next time you hit the training grounds, train hard. But more importantly, train salty.
