The same ol' Fire Ground Issues, deployment!!

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Permalink Reply by Chad A Baker on January 28, 2009 at 5:44pm

I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughts and ideas, most of which are thoughts and ideas I had contemplated and to hear them from others is a wonderful thing, knowing that my instinct as a young officer in the service is on the right track. I greatly appreciate all of you. I have talked with and am talking with several of my other company officers to find a resolution or a more effecient method of educating my my members.

Thank you again,

Lt Chad A Baker

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Permalink Reply by Ryland Lauen on January 29, 2009 at 6:02pm

Chad,

To solve these issues in our department, I learned long ago that nudging, coaching, encourage work well with about 75% of your recruits. However, the other 25% need good old fashioned Ball Breaking as we refer to it. You have to make them understand who is the boss, and what the boss expects. You must make this very clear from the day they walk into your station. We have a meeting with each new recruit, the day they start work, and when we walk out of the office, there is a very clear understanding of what is expected of them. It's only fair that each of you understand what is expected.

The inventory problem has been solved by randomly walking in to the dayroom, picking out 1 individual, and heading to the apparatus bay for a little "Show and Tell". When they don't know where a certain piece of equipment is on the apparatus, they seem to learn quickly that if a ranking officer is checking up on these skills, maybe they better pick up the slack and learn them. The understanding of a ranking officer knowing, and them not knowing has been enough motivation for our dept so far. Hopefully it will continue this way!

Good Luck!

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Permalink Reply by JW on January 31, 2009 at 12:19pm

Lt-

I used to be a full-time station resident at a busy suburban volunteer fire district and the way we handled people that don't know basic skills is to not let them be active. If you don't know your first due box, if you don't know the medbag or what compartments contain certain equipment because you don't do routine truck checks with the rest of the house - you don't run calls. Period. You are a danger to the public and to your crew. Or if it is an all hands event and every piece of apparatus is rolling out, you do the boring jobs on scene (backing up the man on the nozzle for an extrication, or rehab at a structure fire). You would be amazed how that lights a fire under some people to see other guys cutting up the car or putting out fire!

And we didn't just put it on the new guys to learn all of this stuff themselves. It was considered part of the station duties for residents to properly give drive time on the apparatus/set an example by performing truck checks properly AND to be available to answer any questions that the probie might have. Gradually we developed a culture that wasn't satisfied with being second best ... and damn it feels good to watch sister stations fumble with packs and crosslays while we dominate their first due calls.

I don't know whether this helps Lt but it sure worked for us

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Permalink Reply by Shawn Tibbitts on January 31, 2009 at 3:39pm

On memorization, I can remember as a rookie when they would play truck jepordy with me. They would ask me for a tool and I would have them follow me to the compartment it was in. This was a big help becouse you would walk around the truck on your down time trying to figure out where stuff was so you wouldnt look like an idiot. It also helped most of our trucks were set up the same, equipment wise, so you would know on another engine where you could grab something if needed. I agree with Joe as well, weekly inventories helped alot to.

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