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Today at the firehouse (11-2) it was a hard to get the guys to train. Their excuse to me was "it is Sunday". I struggled to get the guys off the couch to do a simple half hour of training. I am curious what your crews do for training on Sunday or do you not train on Sunday's?

Todd McKee

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Our Department trains every tuesday night 1900-2100hrs, The city of which I work is a composite department. In 2006 the city approved what we call mandatory training which includes 9 subject:
1- FF safety (RIT & SURVIVAL)
2- IMS
3- 1st Aid
4- CPR
5- SCBA - 70 sec don and and work exercise
6- Haz Mat (Operations - Decon)
7- Defib (they run PAD)
8- Technical Rescue Awareness (Water / Rope) as we have a TRT and the non members are Shorebased for water.
9- Ship Borad Firefighting (Lake Erie is our south Shore and Welland Canal is runs through our city.

Needless to say time after time our volunteers (Parttime) fail or refuse to take part. They know its mandatory training and if they fail or miss they are taken out of service. However thay keep refusing and at times the city wont back us (Training) up and keeps giving 2-3-4-5-6th chances. When do we say enough is enough? Firefighters need to start being held responsible for thier lack of care for the Job, cause the way I see it.. Its just that a JOB.. The only thing a volunteer has the right to is Volunteer to sign up and quit everything in between is mandatory and rules need to be followed. This goes for our career members as well.
Sorry for the long reply :L)
Wayne
Dusty, thats just sarcastic. My city has a subway system that has a tunnel system. There is not a lot of opportunity to train on operations in the tunnel except for when it is shut-down. Every 2-3 moths our department has a drill with San Francisco in the tunnels it involves about 10 engine companies in total. They are down there at 4am. It's just part of the job. We don't want another LODD in the tunnel as we had in the late 70's. And you can have a drill on Sunday and still have plenty of time to watch football. Just chose a drill that is not as involved a stretching lines. We have drills that may only take 30 minutes and get it done before or after the game. By the way those sports you are watching. Think how much those guys are training, everyday of the week, for a game, no days off, because they want to win.
Wayne ,i don't care if you are and paid fire fighter,or volunteer,on our departments,we have to do the training,we do train on Sundays,and we go though the Training Academy ,volunteer and paid department are certified and license,all the same.,that is here in the state I live..Training the most of all ,is going to the scene,and any accidents .Day or night..Always training to do our job,as and fire fighter..

Wayne Benner Jr (Casper) said:
Our Department trains every tuesday night 1900-2100hrs, The city of which I work is a composite department. In 2006 the city approved what we call mandatory training which includes 9 subject:
1- FF safety (RIT & SURVIVAL)
2- IMS
3- 1st Aid
4- CPR
5- SCBA - 70 sec don and and work exercise
6- Haz Mat (Operations - Decon)
7- Defib (they run PAD)
8- Technical Rescue Awareness (Water / Rope) as we have a TRT and the non members are Shorebased for water.
9- Ship Borad Firefighting (Lake Erie is our south Shore and Welland Canal is runs through our city.

Needless to say time after time our volunteers (Parttime) fail or refuse to take part. They know its mandatory training and if they fail or miss they are taken out of service. However thay keep refusing and at times the city wont back us (Training) up and keeps giving 2-3-4-5-6th chances. When do we say enough is enough? Firefighters need to start being held responsible for thier lack of care for the Job, cause the way I see it.. Its jsut that a JOB.. The only thing a volunteer has the right to is Volunteer to sign up and quit everything in between is mandatory and rules need to be followed. This goes for our career members as well.
Sorry for the long reply :L)
Wayne
I Wasnt Name calling? I was stating what happens here in Canada at my department.. I wish we had what you have but we dont. So what happens when your Vollie/Part-time/Career fail or dont go? Are they dismissed? Or given a task that keeps them in the safe zone. The fact is many are not in it for the JOB but more for the Tshirt where I work.

Brenda Tenney said:
Wayne ,i don't care if you are and paid fire fighter,or volunteer,on our departments,we have to do the training,we do train on Sundays,and we go though the Training Academy ,volunteer and paid department are certified and license,all the same.,that is here in the state I live..Training the most of all ,is going to the scene,and any accidents .Day or night..Always training to do our job,as and fire fighter..

Wayne Benner Jr (Casper) said:
Our Department trains every tuesday night 1900-2100hrs, The city of which I work is a composite department. In 2006 the city approved what we call mandatory training which includes 9 subject:
1- FF safety (RIT & SURVIVAL)
2- IMS
3- 1st Aid
4- CPR
5- SCBA - 70 sec don and and work exercise
6- Haz Mat (Operations - Decon)
7- Defib (they run PAD)
8- Technical Rescue Awareness (Water / Rope) as we have a TRT and the non members are Shorebased for water.
9- Ship Borad Firefighting (Lake Erie is our south Shore and Welland Canal is runs through our city.

Needless to say time after time our volunteers (Parttime) fail or refuse to take part. They know its mandatory training and if they fail or miss they are taken out of service. However thay keep refusing and at times the city wont back us (Training) up and keeps giving 2-3-4-5-6th chances. When do we say enough is enough? Firefighters need to start being held responsible for thier lack of care for the Job, cause the way I see it.. Its jsut that a JOB.. The only thing a volunteer has the right to is Volunteer to sign up and quit everything in between is mandatory and rules need to be followed. This goes for our career members as well.
Sorry for the long reply :L)
Wayne
Todd, Thanks for starting this discussion. I think the responses not only answers the original post but defines the very issue of which you question, "do we or do we not train on Sundays?" The replies show how diverse we really are as firefighters. The division among our ranks is mind numbing to me but is a reality none the less. That diversity and division create a culture within local departments. I can tell you how we train at my house but I am not sure that would help as much as telling you why I train. For me it's not about fire related deaths or injuries. It is not about saving some life or property. What motivates me to train, is a desire to perfect my craft. I truly wish to perfrom at a high level every time we are given a job. The only path I could find to be able to work at that high level was training. Training provided me the oppotunity to be better and to be balanced while working. It is something I think gets overlooked alot in the fire service. It gets hidden behind grave statistics and banter over paid or volley. It is called a work ethic. Simply stated for me, when I am at work, I work. Training is work on our job. So I hope that helps with the original post. Side note about football on Sundays. I challenged my crew to train harder than what they expected from our local NFL team. I am in Cowboy country and I think we all know what kind of season they are having. I found it interesting that we expect more time in practice from a football team then we do from each other. Our game day does not have instant replay.

Thanks,
Marty
Could we just agree that in areas that can't support all paid departments, you need to have volunteers or go without protection?

Paying someone $100,000 a year gets a lot of cooperation for training. Paid departments don't tell crews to come in on their time off without paying them. If you want vollies to come in after they have busted their a** for whatever job they work for, you have to make it interesting, pertinent and fun. You can get away with kicking peoples a**** doing hose advances IF there is a big team win feeling afterward. Otherwise, it's just two-a-days, and most of us are too old for that gratuitous crap.

Set training whenever you want. Set goals and standards that are across the board, old timers and new guys. If someone wants to just drive a tender, test and certify them for just that job. If they can't do interior, they can ladder, secure utilities, unkink hose, run defensive/exposure lines and give the inside crews rehab time. You do the best you can with what you have.

When I was a lot younger, was starting a very tough course of instruction and the Director of the program gave us some very good advise. He pointed out that you need to know the difference between problems and conditions. Problems can be solved, conditions must be lived with. DON'T spend energy/time worrying about conditions.
Larry Lasich said:
Could we just agree that in areas that can't support all paid departments, you need to have volunteers or go without protection?

Paying someone $100,000 a year gets a lot of cooperation for training. Paid departments don't tell crews to come in on their time off without paying them. If you want vollies to come in after they have busted their a** for whatever job they work for, you have to make it interesting, pertinent and fun. You can get away with kicking peoples a**** doing hose advances IF there is a big team win feeling afterward. Otherwise, it's just two-a-days, and most of us are too old for that gratuitous crap.

Set training whenever you want. Set goals and standards that are across the board, old timers and new guys. If someone wants to just drive a tender, test and certify them for just that job. If they can't do interior, they can ladder, secure utilities, unkink hose, run defensive/exposure lines and give the inside crews rehab time. You do the best you can with what you have.

When I was a lot younger, was starting a very tough course of instruction and the Director of the program gave us some very good advise. He pointed out that you need to know the difference between problems and conditions. Problems can be solved, conditions must be lived with. DON'T spend energy/time worrying about conditions.

Well said. I think the point Dusty, and many of you are making is the day of the week isn't as important as training when needed. Nobody likes to train just to "check the box" off for the month. Do what you gotta do, when you need to do it; if you can get the training done on other days so that Sunday can used for other projects then great, if you can't, then train, it's not the end of the world. If you have paid guys that want to file a greivance because they had to train on Sunday, then buy them some cold oil rags to keep the ants off of their candy a****. If you have volunteers that aren't doing what is required then be realistic and limit their activities so they don't get themselves or others hurt.
How on earth this got turned into a Career /Vollie is beyound me.( I agree to your 1st line) The i was lost.
I used the word volunteer, as In my department we have volunteers of which I came from the ranks there(proudly).
However to state that not all members need to be trained at the same ability for fire suppression is crazy talk. I understand the difference between Vollie/ Career. Look at kentland 33. Those guys are all volunteer and run more calls then my Career truck does and they are not paid, and their very good at what they do.
So now look at training how can you say its ok to have guys just learn to pump and drive but not do suppression. If this was the case and its a volunteer company and a daytime call goes out. And a rescue needs to be done and only the driver operator(s) arrive..Who is going in the building? Who is doing the interior fire fight? and vice-versa
MY OPINION & ONLY MINE..Every one who shows up on the fireground with the fire service (except EMS) should be suppression firefighters. Imagine if we had volunteer medic who didnt need to train because they were just that Volunteer. And the only way to get this done is by training.
Last but not least.. We need volunteers as they are very important to the fire service, however we dont need untrained personnel (Career/Vollie/Part-time) on the fire ground..
Just my thoughts dont take it personal..
Stay Safe Wayne Benner
Marty:

Well said and I truly think that we should all train as often as we can. Training does not always have to be for a few hours but at least something everyday. Thank you for your reply!!
Todd McKee
Marty Mayes said:
Todd, Thanks for starting this discussion. I think the responses not only answers the original post but defines the very issue of which you question, "do we or do we not train on Sundays?" The replies show how diverse we really are as firefighters. The division among our ranks is mind numbing to me but is a reality none the less. That diversity and division create a culture within local departments. I can tell you how we train at my house but I am not sure that would help as much as telling you why I train. For me it's not about fire related deaths or injuries. It is not about saving some life or property. What motivates me to train, is a desire to perfect my craft. I truly wish to perfrom at a high level every time we are given a job. The only path I could find to be able to work at that high level was training. Training provided me the oppotunity to be better and to be balanced while working. It is something I think gets overlooked alot in the fire service. It gets hidden behind grave statistics and banter over paid or volley. It is called a work ethic. Simply stated for me, when I am at work, I work. Training is work on our job. So I hope that helps with the original post. Side note about football on Sundays. I challenged my crew to train harder than what they expected from our local NFL team. I am in Cowboy country and I think we all know what kind of season they are having. I found it interesting that we expect more time in practice from a football team then we do from each other. Our game day does not have instant replay.

Thanks,
Marty
Fires don't know its Sunday. You should learn something new everyday in the firehouse including Sunday.
"Train we must"
Todd,

Also for Anthony, fires that only happen on a Sunday!

Just a thought. This is a drill we do often at my house on Sundays. We attend a local church, deliver a short fire prevention speech at the service. We then conduct a pre-fire plan, specific to the time and place. It has been very informative to see the occupancy during the worship times. Not to mention getting a good look at the construction in all of it's incarnations thru years of good will additions from volunteer labor.We also assist the church with fire evac plans and help them learn how to communicate with command. Two of the churchs were so impressed with our "public relations" they allowed us to conduct mass casualty drills on a Sunday using thier parishoners for victims. So I agree with Anthony, fires and MCIs do happen on a Sunday. More important, some fires and MCIs only occur on a Sunday!

Stay safe, Train away the blues,

Marty
I think that this would be a good time for this part of the discussion to be moved to it's own thread.

Wayne,
The point I was making was that, in the department I volunteer at, we have maybe 10 people that can do it all at a structure fire. I'm talking Engine company ops, not pump ops, we have maybe 6 qualified pump operators. That means that if we have to support a Tender shuttle, draft operation or exposure protection it would come right off of the top of our interior attack crews. There isn't anything that we can do about it, it's a function of the population of the district.

In a paid department, you are told what your crew size is, and even if it isn't enough, you KNOW you have it every time that you go out. If my volunteer department gets a bad one when I'm at work, the Officers are at work, and the well qualified FF are at work (and we work 20-50 miles from home) than according to your reasoning, we couldn't even show up to protect outlying structures.

So if the Tender has a qualified driver and the draft site pumper and the water supply sector are run by non-interior people, we can form an interior qualified crew. If there are new (untried) people running exposure protection lines under the supervision of an Officer, the inside crews get to sit down instead rotating to exposure protection.

There are a lot of ways that you can let people in the community participate, assist their neighbors and feel like they are doing something special.
It's like being in the Service. Not everyone has to be Ranger qualified to be a perfectly acceptable trigger puller.

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