Enhance Your Firefighter Training Opportunities Through Relationships

(1) Photos by author.

We found out early enough in the morning to be able use two of the three houses that were scheduled for demolition that day. Houses would be demolished at 9 a.m., 12 noon, and 3 p.m.; the same schedule applied to the Friday and Monday demolitions. Within two hours of getting his permission, we had the first two engine companies at the site and on roofs for vertical roof ventilation training, instructed by two experienced senior truck company officers (photo 1). A third company was inside a bungalow receiving instruction on recognizing and battling knee wall fires by an experienced, knowledgeable senior officer. We arrived and started training at around 11 a.m. on the house scheduled for demolition at noon, then moved to the house scheduled for 3 p.m. when the demo company was ready to start tearing down the other house. At the start of the next day, the demo company did other work on the street—e.g., cleanup and tree removal—to allow us more time with the house scheduled to be torn down first that day. We did the same thing as the day before, staying at one house ahead of the demolition schedule.

After an hour, the crews would rotate to another workshop to maximize the benefits of these acquired structures. The three officers conducted this same training nearly a dozen times over the next four days. During this training, I spoke numerous times with the demolition company owner, getting to know him and building a professional relationship. In the end, we gave him a certificate of appreciation, signed by the fire commissioner, along with N-95 masks for his crews and their families. The owner’s wife was a veterinarian and was running low on masks at her practice. At the time (April 2020), masks were at a premium.

Since then, that company now calls us when it receives demolition contracts in our city so we can use the structures for training before they are torn down. In addition to vertical roof ventilation and knee wall fire evolutions, we will train on search and rescue, rapid intervention team operations, building construction, and whatever else our current training needs are. Contact your city’s building department to find out if any local structures are scheduled to be demolished. Since then, we have arranged for the building department to keep us informed about the availability of vacant, soon-to-be demolished structures we could use for training.

Trench Rescue

We have responded to two trench rescue calls over the past few years. Although we had conducted some awareness-level training since then, we have not done so in an actual trench. There is a field behind our apparatus storage garage. I contacted the water department supervisor, whom I had met some years ago at a five-day class. He readily agreed to bring in water department excavators to dig a trench for us. After first verifying the field had no underground utilities running through it, they dug a three-foot-deep, 10-foot-long trench.

For this training, we placed a mannequin in the bottom of the trench under a concrete drainpipe; the scenario was that the drainpipe had rolled into the trench and onto the victim. The fire department technical rescue team showed firefighters how to safely rescue the victim using chains, air bags, cribbing, and a lever. I had used this rescue scenario numerous times for trench rescue operations for MUSARTF. We had numerous water department members observe the training so they could prevent such an emergency from ever happening to them (photos 2-3).

Extrication

For the next training, we used a relationship that the fire department had built over the years with the local tow company that had a junkyard. For more than 25 years, on request, it has given our department vehicles for extrication training and offered a corner of its parking lot in which to train. After every two-hour training session, while waiting for new engine companies to arrive, the tow company would remove the cut-up vehicles and replaced them with new ones. This happened three times a day for three days. Since this training, the training division requested that the tow company place three vehicles behind the storage garage next to the fire station housing the apparatus that carries the hydraulic extrication tools. Once members cut up the three cars, we contacted the tow company, and shortly those vehicles were replaced with new vehicles to cut up.

On the second day of the extrication training, a representative of trucking company next door to the tow company approached me. He had seen us conducting this training since the day before and offered me two semi-tractors and trailers for training, which we had not trained on before. Escorting me to the rear of his company’s yard, he showed me the semi-tractors and trailers, offering to modify them to meet any training needs we had. I agreed on the spot.

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I called an area instructor who had taught numerous heavy vehicle extrication classes throughout Michigan. He agreed to come to conduct training for our department using the donated vehicles. Since we provided all the needed equipment and vehicles, he gave us a low price for the training.

We scheduled the training for two months down the road. It would simulate a car rear-ending a trailer. The trucking company modified the trailer by cutting the rear impact bar and pushing it up under the trailer. It also removed the trailer’s rearmost axle, allowing for the car to go farther under the trailer, making the extrication more difficult (photo 4). The tow company provided the car, and the instructor showed us how to stabilize and safely lift the trailer to allow access to the patient in the car (photo 5).

Since this training, we have used the trailers two more times. The second training simulated a side impact of the trailer by a car and a truck driver having a medical emergency while in the sleep cab. The third training was a trailer rolling over onto a vehicle. During the class, the trucking company owner came out to assist us in our training, providing information on securing a load and noting the difference between a steel and an aluminum trailer.

For this event, we arranged for the city’s cable channel to film the evolutions and interview the trucking company owner for broadcast on the channel. Since then, we have recognized the tow and the trucking company owners at our department awards banquet (with our mayor and city council present) for their donations.

We invited training chiefs from throughout our county and beyond to these trainings. One training chief was able to arrange similar training with a local trucking company for his department. Good relationships with nearby departments are mutually beneficial to everyone. We can share ideas, policies, trainings, and equipment. We have loaned our forcible entry door to other departments, and we have been able to borrow mask-fit testing equipment when ours was out being calibrated.

As a result of our excellent relationship with our city’s police department, personnel generously let us book their banquet hall at no charge to host training speakers from out of town. We open these events to departments throughout the state to fill the seats. We have used it twice already and have it booked for a third time for this fall. If a neighboring fire department books the hall, I’m confident it would invite our department to attend.

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City Departments

If we need a specific type of place or piece of equipment to conduct training, we first look within the city infrastructure. If we need a big parking lot to conduct a driver’s training course, the parks and recreation department usually will allow us to use a parking lot at a city park. For a building in which to conduct rope rescue training, we would put in a request to city hall to use its parking garage or to the water recovery plant for use of one of its buildings if available.

We held school bus extrication training late last year. We contacted the transportation departments for the city’s school districts and obtained the three buses needed by making a few phone calls and sending a few e-mails.

If there is training you want to conduct, reach out to people in your network—other training officers, instructors, co-workers, friends, or guest speakers. Consider that the people in your network each may have their own network, significantly increasing the chance of finding what you need.

Recently, we needed some lapel microphones for some guest speakers. We reached out to a city council member who had retired from the county community college. He referred us to someone at the college who lent us lapel microphones. For the sound system to play them through, the city’s communication department contracts with a company that supplies sound systems for outdoor events. Thus, we were able meet our needs at no cost to the training division.

Electric Vehicles

We wanted to educate department members on electric vehicles. Although we have toured an auto manufacturer’s battery lab facility in our city, we had not learned about the electric vehicles themselves. A nearby department training chief informed us of an electric vehicle training event conducted by a mechanical engineer for a tier 2 supplier; this engineer is also a volunteer firefighter for the Troy (MI) Fire Department. He has a low-cost, Michigan Fire Fighter Training Council-approved two-hour course on electric vehicles. This course is very informative. He agreed to conduct this training over three days to ensure all department members received it. The networking enabled our members to receive this information.

A former classmate of mine in the Dearborn Fire Department told me another auto manufacturer has a program that allows his department to purchase current model-year test vehicles for extrication training for $350 per vehicle. The fire department needs to pick up and transport the vehicle from the manufacturer to the training site. After using it, the department returns the car to the company for disposal. Using this program, his department obtained a sport model featuring carbon fiber construction elements that would have normally cost $100,000.

Another car company’s technical center located in our area employs many engineers. A contact I knew working there put me in touch with a higher-up in the company, to whom I mentioned the other manufacturer’s auto program. This company did not have a similar program, but he offered my department its choice of nine test vehicles (but no electrics) to cut up with some conditions attached: We had to arrange to transport the vehicles to the training site and allow their engineers to attend and observe the evolutions. When the training was finished, our tow company would sign paperwork with the auto maker stating that the tow company would crush the vehicles. This no-cost training is a win for everyone—the fire department, the car maker, and the tow company.

Understandably, not everyone has an auto maker testing site in their state, but you can contact a local auto plant, dealership, or tow yard and see what is possible.

Creating Additional Local Interest

Whenever conducting training that might capture the public’s interest, we contact the city’s cable channel to film it. We always invite political leaders, who are interviewed and allowed to participate in the training. The interview gives them free publicity that they can use to show their support for the department. In participating in the evolution, they can appreciate how physically demanding firefighting can be.

The city cable channel makes the department a copy of the recorded training and shows excerpts of the event in its news show. This is free positive public relations for the fire department, showing that we are keeping up on our training to assist our citizens if called. A local business owner seeing or hearing of this may contact your department to offer a piece of equipment to use for training. I never imagined anyone would offer me two semi-tractors and trailers.

Department budgets are a fluid and changing situation every year, and budget cuts force us to run lean. Training to keep up with changes in technology is challenging. We must continue to be imaginative to bring the best training to our members despite limited funds. Building and working with your community relationships, your city departments, and your contact network can help make this happen.

JIM STEVENSON is an adjunct instructor at the Macomb Community College Fire Academy and a 25-year veteran of the fire service. He served with the Warren (MI) Fire Department and retired as the chief of training. He is a certified instructor 2 with a bachelor’s degree in public affairs management from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in public administration from Central Michigan University. Stevenson is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University’s School of Fire Staff and Command Executive Leadership Program Class 23.