FireLink

Well, I'm going to be honest and admit that I need help. I'm an officer so that means I have to teach a bunch of people about stuff. Since I'm the fire lieutenant for the juniors, they need to know a lot about fire. Our department has two engines in our main company. Any ideas for some training?

Being a Junior Corps, you should stick to the basics.  Go over water supply ops with supply hose, dressing hydrants, stretching hose and moving hose, using nozzles and selecting the appropriate nozzle for the job.  Fire behavior, get some videos from the Fire Academy and watch different fire patterns and smoke behaviors.  If you have a training tower thats a plus, practice advancing lines into the building, on your knees with your face mask clouded over or even in a smokey environment if you have the smoke machine.  A drill I did in my Junior Corps so many years ago (watch the old jokes! LOL) was a smoke house.  We had a small building used for the annual fair, we set the smoke machine up, put some chairs, a couch and other stuff to make it look like a house, hid a rescue manikin inside and put a heat lamp in one corner to simulate the fire.  When you crawled in you could see the light and feel some heat when you were close to it.  Good drill.

Others are "Midnight Alarm"...Set your gear up in front of you with everyone, have a time clock, and everyone dress in full turnouts as fast as you can.  I believe in Firefigher I you need to dress in a minute?  Correct me if Im wrong everyone.  But this is a great drill to get familiar with your turnouts and how to don them fast, including the air pack.

Air pack drill...Have a quick lecture put on by a firefighter on the use and safety features of your pack, and go over emergency procedures for using them.  Than have a "Maze" in your station with meeting tables and wax paper in your masks.  As they go through the maze simulate different emergency situations like getting snagged by electrical wire and getting tangled, loosing air to your mask, becoming lost or disoriented, and if you can advance enough with these skills start going over the "Mayday" procedures and buddy breathing.

Ladder drills...Raise em, carry em, climb em, work from them, leg locks, modified leg lock, arm locks.  Good drills for the basics.

Thats about all I can think of right now, but let me know if you need anything else.  I would be glad to help.  Stay Safe!

Fire Jepardy is fun we did this on the last day of my FF 1 class was a good way to go over everything. 

Fire Jeopardy is always a good one. It gets everyone involed.It even gets some of those cobb webs down from us older folks.LOL.

for comms it is good to get a free channel and send crews out to certain things like the fire truck and give them a specific thing to find or a detail to look for and have them report back to you.

That's pretty much all we're allowed to do unless you're medically qualified. Like, there's a lot, but it's so hard to describe.

When i teach communicatons i have one in the dispatch room and the other teams doing a hunt for items that are hidden all around only using clear text and no land marks unless they call them out to dispactch. another good one is draw a picture on a dry erase board and tell them how to draw it and see how they do. Good luck!

Lt_Turtle says ...

PAR? i know what the AR stands for but the P? thanks for the advise! i think that's what i'm going to do.

PAR = Personnel Accountability Report 

hallberg630 says ...

another training you can try is one i learned at a RIT class...

Items needed- 2 radios, 2 sets of legos (same amount and type and color in each

have one team go in one room with a radio and set of legos and the other team go with the other radio and legos to another room.

the first team has to build something out of ther legos and then explain to the other team how to build it using firefighting terms

Ex. one blue block on the charlie delta corner with long end running towards the alpha corner

this teaches quick radio discipline and explaining directions in case something bad ever did happen and you needed to expalin where you were ina building

Excellent ideas guys!  A little input into this idea is instead of using the dept radios, try getting some cheap 2 way radios like hunting radios, you can get a set for 20 bucks at walmart and they are invaluable for training and special events.  We have them for the Fair EMS booth and we use them for drills, it doesnt tie up dispatch channels and its fun.

hahaha. i can't stop laughing at the legos part. you have no idea how frustrating that would be. lol. but, it's priceless to watch.

I've done something like that before, except it wasn't in our department. I know what you mean. that could be fun. I'll see if we can do something like that.