Whenever members take outside courses, they should be required to bring what they’ve learned back to their department and share it with their fellow members. I have the bonus that I can share the classes I take with a slightly larger membership. (About 13,500 right now. :)) Over the past 5 weeks, I participated in a Fire Officer II course taught by the Connecticut Fire Academy (CFA). Volunteer departments are in desperate need of officer training, and it is my goal to distill the information provided in this course to what volunteers truly need to worry about.
I must start with a disclaimer. I admit that I am a terrible student. I have the bonus that I have phenomenal retention of what I read. The problem is, I have no study habits. I envy those who work hard to achieve and study when it comes to coursework. I have always wanted to have more drive and work hard at my coursework. Following the example of one of my good friends, I tried my best to work hard at this course and I am using this article to help review the material.
The Fire Officer II course presented by CFA was originally developed by the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute. Fire Officer II is an 80 hour course based upon the NFPA standard 1021. The course is designed for the Captain level officer, specifically for multi company supervision. In order to complete the course, you need to have completed Fire Officer I and Fire Instructor I.
I came out of Fire Officer I a few years back with some new knowledge but with limited applicability to my volunteer department. With this in mind, I was worried about attending Fire Officer II. My fears were realized by the time the course was over, but there are some great pearls of wisdom within the course that I will share with you.
The course was held Tuesday and Thursday from 0830-1630 at a nearby paid fire department. I mention this only to give you an idea of the group I took the class with. Out of the class of 21, I was the only one to stick my hand up as a volunteer. Talk about being the black sheep. There will be more on this later. The interesting fact that was revealed towards the end of the class was that all but two of the attendees had their start in the volunteer ranks.
The instructors included Fire Chiefs from across the State of Connecticut. The CFA is due credit in that their instructors are top notch. All of the instructors had real life experience to relate to the class and while there were a few bumpy areas, overall they did a great job. The class is designed to have extensive discussion and it is expected that the students will participate. Students were also required to complete multiple homework and group assignments.
The first day spent most of its time on two areas, governmental structure and fire service structure. While this part of the course may have looked a lot like a basic civics class, the points taught were very valid for both volunteers and career departments alike. Departments need to understand their local, state and national legislative structure because it guides us in everything we do.
This is one area where fire departments in general fail. The police have a much stronger relationship with legislature and have benefited from this in many ways. When departments come to me complaining of financial problems or the like, I always ask what their local government has done to help them. This is simply due to the fact that the local government, albeit town, city, county or district, is ultimately the one responsible for fire coverage.
The class spent quite a bit of time talking about the different forms of government, how they work, and who to influence. While we may not all need to know how each type of government works, we do need to know who makes the real decisions and how the decisions are made. The first homework assignment included finding out how your department is authorized to act, and who it reports to. This information is freely available and can be easily found in your town’s charter and/or annual report.
What I found was that our department isn’t included in the town organization chart, and is only mentioned in the charter. Our charter essentially says the volunteer departments are doing a good job and we aren’t going to mess with them. I challenge each of you to do your research, you may find some interesting information. Once you have found out who is responsible, you may find that you do not have to go it alone.
Many volunteer departments throughout the US pay for all of their costs without governmental assistance and they don’t have to. Often the local government may not realize that they are ultimately responsible and that should we have to close our doors they would be responsible for the cost to provide a paid service. As much as we need to educate ourselves on governmental structure, we need to educate our governing body on what it takes to run a volunteer department.
Recently I was speaking with a local department that was looking at billing for services and I asked them what they were getting from the town. When they told me that their local government gave them less then it takes to pay even regular bills, I was amazed. As we spoke, I found that their meager allotment had even been regularly cut over the past years and was asking for further cuts. While this is getting into the lecture on budgeting which was days later in class, it is a great example of why we need to educate our locale government.
While we are on the topic of money and the government, we need to keep in mind that the federal government is responsible for the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program, aka the Fire Act. This brings me to one of the more ‘interesting’ discussions I got into with my classmates, but that will have to be held off until next week. To be continued...
By: Jason Zigmont, VolunteerFD.org