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Creating Great Table Tops!

Good Day Everyone,

I am a firm believer in table top scenarios! They are great tools to train our firefighter and fire officers. Cost effective training; it is easy to run a multi station, multi agency incident on a table top rather than a full scale exercise. Easy to set up, easy to tear down, easy to make another scenario! …How easy is it for you to pull 5 engines, 5 tankers, 4 ambulances, and 5 police cars out of service to do a training exercise as well find some business owners who are willing to participate on top of bringing in firefighters and other emergency services staff… This would take a lot of man hours to develop a scenario and is likely logistically impossible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t get me wrong full scale exercises have their place. They are effective however like I said costly and logistically straining. Many great lessons are learned from both large scale and small scale. Lots of critical thinking on strategy and tactics! This is what I enjoy, watching the reactions and stresses of those commanding the table tops, seeing what decisions they make! Then breaking down the who what why where and how they came to making that choice and then providing useful response and additional ideas.

 

Table tops are used to generate that critical thinking within a controlled environment. Being able to analysis options to strategies and tactics is the key. Commanders can also evaluate operations and safety concerns, as well response issues. Proper radio communication can also be hammered out!! The options are almost endless.

 

 

I hope you enjoyed the images of some of our latest table tops.  What I am looking for are futher ideas to table tops, how can we make them better more effective???  What props are you using?  What can we add to our sets? Who are suppiliers of props? Anything, lets get the discussion rolling!

 

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Shawn McKERRY on February 15, 2011 at 2:28pm

One Great Key to great table tops are getting stuff that looks and feel like your own equipment! Find Trucks that look like your rigs, they bring more buy in from the members and allow them to become more attached to the scenarios!

 

 

Permalink Reply by Jesse Quinalty on August 5, 2011 at 6:03pm

I too am a fan of the table top simulations. We have a city table and a wildland table. Our city table is broken into three distinct areas that require different types of tactics; residential, commercial and industrial. We have color died cotton balls to simulate smoke and fire. We have used the tables for not only structure fires, but hazardous materials and multi-casualty incidents as well.

 

The wildland table is really cool because it actually burns! It is a sand table covered in wood shavings. The fire is truely affected by the fuel moisture, topography and wind. The engines utilize a 3 cc syringe to extinguish the fire. They can refill their syringes from 5 cc cups that are simulated water tanks. If the IC does not order enough resources it is easy to burn down the entire 4' x 16' table along with the wood houses. We also have hand crews, dozers and aircraft.

 

Chief, I am interested in the road / grass mat that you have. Where did you get it?

 

Jesse Quinalty

Red Helmet Training

www.redhelmettraining.com

 

Permalink Reply by Shawn McKERRY on August 9, 2011 at 4:54pm

Hi Jesse,

 

Thanks for your piece here, that is quite the set up you have there. The wildland table top is awesome! Very cool!

 

As for our map, I actually made it on Photoshop and then printed it out on a plotter. So it is electronic and we can change and modify it to meet additional or varying needs. So very simple and really you can run with the options you want and then print it.

 

Shawn 

Permalink Reply by Matt Fisher on December 27, 2011 at 4:32pm

Hi Shawn. Is there a way you could send the file of the table top.  If possible could you send the file and we will have a local printing shop print off the picture. Our current table top set up is very outdated and not very user friendly. Please send response to mfisher@hermiston.or.us . Thank you for your time. Matt Fisher

Permalink Reply by Walter G on January 9, 2012 at 4:12pm

Im a motivated career paid firefighter and this is exactly what I was looking for.  How and where can I get a model city to train with at my station ?     

glock1865@yahoo.com

Permalink Reply by Luis Fco Rodriguez on March 3, 2014 at 12:59pm

Hello everyone! I use this tool for training new staff and also for the evaluation of procedures. Occasionally we have used to evaluate some accidents involving our vehicles, avoiding having to block the streets and even occupy other units in the reconstruction of the facts. I agree with Shawn, many cases on a full-scale scenario would have prohibitive costs making it logistically impossible.
I hope I can count on your cooperation to exchange ideas on the design and I can even send photographs of pieces that use! (Only when requested, due to that I have a lot of pieces eg over 100 different character models at different scales). Feel free to add me! thanks in advance

Luis.

Permalink Reply by Jesse Quinalty on March 3, 2014 at 8:53pm

Hi Luis,

I would be happy to share scenarios with you. You can see more pictures of our table top training on our website along with some videos of the wildland table.

Jesse Quinalty

Red Helmet Training

www.RedHelmetTraining.com


 
Luis Fco Rodriguez said:

Hello everyone! I use this tool for training new staff and also for the evaluation of procedures. Occasionally we have used to evaluate some accidents involving our vehicles, avoiding having to block the streets and even occupy other units in the reconstruction of the facts. I agree with Shawn, many cases on a full-scale scenario would have prohibitive costs making it logistically impossible.
I hope I can count on your cooperation to exchange ideas on the design and I can even send photographs of pieces that use! (Only when requested, due to that I have a lot of pieces eg over 100 different character models at different scales). Feel free to add me! thanks in advance

Luis.

Permalink Reply by Jerry McGhee on May 13, 2014 at 10:24pm

Very nice model and layout.

Our department has discussed this same venture for training. Table tops are valuable and often never used.

Great work on the layout

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