Where firefighters come to talk training
Creating Great Table Tops!
Good Day Everyone,
I am a firm believer in table top scenarios! They are great tools to train our firefighter and fire officers. Cost effective training; it is easy to run a multi station, multi agency incident on a table top rather than a full scale exercise. Easy to set up, easy to tear down, easy to make another scenario! …How easy is it for you to pull 5 engines, 5 tankers, 4 ambulances, and 5 police cars out of service to do a training exercise as well find some business owners who are willing to participate on top of bringing in firefighters and other emergency services staff… This would take a lot of man hours to develop a scenario and is likely logistically impossible. 
Don’t get me wrong full scale exercises have their place. They are effective however like I said costly and logistically straining. Many great lessons are learned from both large scale and small scale. Lots of critical thinking on strategy and tactics! This is what I enjoy, watching the reactions and stresses of those commanding the table tops, seeing what decisions they make! Then breaking down the who what why where and how they came to making that choice and then providing useful response and additional ideas.
Table tops are used to generate that critical thinking within a controlled environment. Being able to analysis options to strategies and tactics is the key. Commanders can also evaluate operations and safety concerns, as well response issues. Proper radio communication can also be hammered out!! The options are almost endless.
I hope you enjoyed the images of some of our latest table tops. What I am looking for are futher ideas to table tops, how can we make them better more effective??? What props are you using? What can we add to our sets? Who are suppiliers of props? Anything, lets get the discussion rolling!
Tags: maps, table, top, tops, training
Views: 742
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Shawn McKERRY on -
One Great Key to great table tops are getting stuff that looks and feel like your own equipment! Find Trucks that look like your rigs, they bring more buy in from the members and allow them to become more attached to the scenarios!
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Permalink Reply by Jesse Quinalty on -
I too am a fan of the table top simulations. We have a city table and a wildland table. Our city table is broken into three distinct areas that require different types of tactics; residential, commercial and industrial. We have color died cotton balls to simulate smoke and fire. We have used the tables for not only structure fires, but hazardous materials and multi-casualty incidents as well.
The wildland table is really cool because it actually burns! It is a sand table covered in wood shavings. The fire is truely affected by the fuel moisture, topography and wind. The engines utilize a 3 cc syringe to extinguish the fire. They can refill their syringes from 5 cc cups that are simulated water tanks. If the IC does not order enough resources it is easy to burn down the entire 4' x 16' table along with the wood houses. We also have hand crews, dozers and aircraft.
Chief, I am interested in the road / grass mat that you have. Where did you get it?
Jesse Quinalty
Red Helmet Training
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Permalink Reply by Shawn McKERRY on
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Hi Jesse,
Thanks for your piece here, that is quite the set up you have there. The wildland table top is awesome! Very cool!
As for our map, I actually made it on Photoshop and then printed it out on a plotter. So it is electronic and we can change and modify it to meet additional or varying needs. So very simple and really you can run with the options you want and then print it.
Shawn
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Permalink Reply by Matt Fisher on -
Hi Shawn. Is there a way you could send the file of the table top. If possible could you send the file and we will have a local printing shop print off the picture. Our current table top set up is very outdated and not very user friendly. Please send response to mfisher@hermiston.or.us . Thank you for your time. Matt Fisher
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