An Encouraging Training Session

I just finished giving a two-day training program to a very “together” group of firefighters and officers. I won’t mention where the training took place, but it was very apparent that these departments worked well together.
The group of fire departments was part of an area where over 40 departments existed in the same county. Of course, there was a major metropolitan department representing one of the 40 departments and surprisingly, they were represented at the training.
I had the chief’s of the departments that attended sit in the back of the room together and left them alone.
They commented at the end of the training that they learned volumes about how "things" were going "fire-wise" in the county. All in all, they were pleased with what they heard.
More than ½ of the 14 actual hours of training wee spent on simulations where the participants were I presented with a working fire scenario of a building in their community. The firefighters, lieutenants, captains, battalion/district and deputy chiefs that made the rest of the over 100 participants were assigned to tables so that no department had a majority of persons at any one table, In other words, we mixed them up. After the simulation was presented they discussed among themselves, how they would handle the assignment given and then one of them told the group how they would handle the situation.
Please don’t get me wrong! There were some disagreements and even some finger-pointing at the chiefs’ table. Even the chiefs admitted that there was more that they could do to unify operations in the county.
The reason that I mention this is because this is living proof that different departments, including major metro departments, can learn to operate effectively and successfully together at the same fire. Automatic and mutual aid works and that ego’s – although present, do certainly eat brains but apparently in some areas are becoming less of a meal and more of an appetizer. If this mid-west, populated county can do it – any area can. With budget cuts increasing and staffing decreasing and automatic and mutual aid becoming more and more prevalent, this was a refreshing surprise.
How are county-wide operations going in your area?