Fire instructor qualifications

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Todd Trudeau on March 25, 2009 at 7:40pm

Chief,
Question for you. First some background. I'm a pipeman and recently I held some forcible entry training refresher at my department. I did some refresher for myself beforehand (watched youtube videos, read techniques in "Fire Officers Handbook of Tactics" by John Norman, read your Strategies book, read and made a copy for each station of the FDNY manual on forcible entry.
I don't concider myself an instructor and I'm certainly not "recognized" by the state as such, but I did catch quite an earful that I'm not Certified to do any training.
My question is, does a company officer or someone who acts as company officer need to be state certified to do company refresher training? What's your opinion?
Todd

Permalink Reply by brandon earley on March 28, 2009 at 1:23am

in arkansas, the state does have a qualification program. it's a 40 hour coarse broke up into 3 parts or you can take the whole thing at one time. to my knowledge there is no refresher. a department that self qualifies their instructors i would think is liable for the content and tactics being taught. if the department members teaching have a great knowledge of the job, then that is very valuable , however if they are teaching things that will cause there teammates to be L.O.D.D.'s then the firemen need to wake up and catch that and question the training. i don't think any firefighter who has been on the job for more than a couple of years has any problem with calling B.S. on what the instructor is saying, it's in our nature. instructors should be held to a higher level simply because they are teaching the new wave of members that will replace them some day and if they are taught the wrong thing from the beginning they will soak it up like a sponge and it will be hard to change them and the bad habits will continue to pass down and we will continue to get preventable L.O.D.D. reports. would it be so bad if we put niosh out of a job because they had nothing to do?

Permalink Reply by Anthony Avillo on March 28, 2009 at 11:05am

i think that decision is made on a local level. Is there local or state qualifications? what does you job spec say? If you can meet tyhe NFPA fire instructor standard fro 1031(i think that's the #) you can be considered qualified but again if there are more stringent qualifications styanadards on either local, county, or satte level, you might have to meet those
A guy giving a drill as a CO or ACO should be able to give a drill without being questioed by ne-er-do-wells who don't have the motivation to do it themselves. Unfortunately in this litigious society, you never know where u will get jammed up Ask your supereiors where u stand here?Good luck
be safe
aa
Todd Trudeau said:

Chief,
Question for you. First some background. I'm a pipeman and recently I held some forcible entry training refresher at my department. I did some refresher for myself beforehand (watched youtube videos, read techniques in "Fire Officers Handbook of Tactics" by John Norman, read your Strategies book, read and made a copy for each station of the FDNY manual on forcible entry.
I don't concider myself an instructor and I'm certainly not "recognized" by the state as such, but I did catch quite an earful that I'm not Certified to do any training.
My question is, does a company officer or someone who acts as company officer need to be state certified to do company refresher training? What's your opinion?
Todd