David Polikoff's Blog – February 2017 Archive (4)

As officers, how do you prepare your firefighters to become officers? Firefighter can move from FF III to Lt. by taking a test. As officers are you doing a disservice by not working with your people? Are you ensuring that the day they are promoted they have the tools to function? Many station officers are putting fighters who are on the promotional list in the officer’s position on the apparatus, while riding behind them to give guidance. This is a time old and great practice. When we think…

The hardest thing to do in the fire service is administrative work. Let’s face it, we would all like to be running calls. The reality is paper work fills up our days. Of all the admin work we do the hardest is discipline. We have had employees that are not performing at a level that is the standard. As an officer you can’t tell your chief that FF Doe can’t do the job. There must be paper work documenting their sub-par performance. Their IPPA (annual evaluation) must reflect poor performance.…

Today’s fire service is called upon to more and more. The term “All Hazards service” is thrown around in the fire service. This means we as Firefighters are tasked to handle any and all emergencies from a sore toe to an active shooter situation and everything in between.  I want to dig down to the company level. Our fire apparatus is being set up to do multiple tasks. The names of the fire service apparatus are changing to fit the growing responsibilities:

Engine Tanker

Rescue…

You are the officer of the engine and you are dispatched first due for a house fire with reported people trapped. You have several decisions to make, among them is laying out going in? There are some who say that it takes time to layout and that is time the fire continues to burn and trapped occupants are in a hostile environment. There are others who say that they would lay out with a 4 man crew and leave the 4^th man to wrap the hydrant and run back to the scene, or jump on the…