Chad Menard's Page

            There are some common fire service debates that just seem to be staples of our craft. In recent light a new one has arisen, traditional helmets versus European. While that one seems to be gaining attention, that won’t be what we discuss today. There are statements out there that say, “What goes around comes around.” and “Everything comes full circle.” This is true. If you talk to anyone that has been in their line of work for any amount of time, they’ll tell you common practices…

            There’s a risk to not taking risks, it’s unsafe. Is that possible? I think so, and in today’s time I feel like some have enveloped themselves so much in being safe, that they no longer train to a standard that allows them to be prepared and competent. That’s unsafe. This does not mean that being safe isn’t necessary, and I would never advocate doing tasks that are unsafe just for the sake of doing them, that’s a suicide mission. However, there is no better safety factor than…

The Modified Minuteman Load

The minute man load is a popular hose load used on many apparatus across America, and it happens to be my favorite load of all the options I’ve seen. I feel as if the minute man load, in whichever configuration you have it loaded, is more versatile than other popular loads. This is of…

Engine Company Riding Assignments

In the following blog post I’m going to be discussing riding assignments for members of engine companies, but riding assignments overall are a good choice to aid in eliminating confusion and help streamline task completion early on in an incident. You can use riding assignments for any apparatus but the task or tool assignments would be different for each, for example,…