Have you ever responded to an incident and had the perfect Action Plan, the team worked flawlessly and never missed a beat? Responding to fire and emergency incidents present challenges to first responders as incidents are truly unknown. What are the lessons learned while at a fire? Can you pass along information to other responders that will help improve responses in the future?
Many of these questions are answered in after action analysis. There are many pitfalls that can occur during the event which can turn lessons learned into attacks and allegations. The USFA has recently released a report to help standardize after action reports.
The United States Fire Administration (USFA) released [click to continue…]
It’s very likely that as part of your travels to become a fire fighter you have learned how to “don” a breathing apparatus (BA), or SCBA. In fire one and two you trained countless times to make sure you hit all the key steps in order to pass the State’s practical examination or to even show up your fellow fire fighters. Since that great day, how many times have you but on your BA? Have you mastered this task?
I have taught the courage to be safe program in many areas of the State and we preach about wearing your seat belts. Then we get statements on how difficult it is to don your BA while wearing a seat belt. The simple statement on not following the law (even department policy) and wearing your seat belt usually points to a deficiency in training at the company level.
This is the drill, put your turnout gear on, in under 60 seconds, get on the apparatus, put on your seat belt, and the don your BA as if you were were responding to a working fire, and then step off the truck. This simple drill usually produces some odd results from the rookie to the most senior fire fighter. Fire fighters, company officers, and engineers (going through the training, engineers should never don a BA while driving an apparatus) will find themselves entangled in a web of seat belt, forgetting the safety lock on the bottle, or even failing to remember some of the simple safety steps required to pass fire fighter I.
Why does this drill produce odd results? Is it [click to continue…]
