Editor’s Opinion | By David Rhodes
We have all heard the complaints about the new generation and their lack of mechanical skills. Although they can do more things with a cell phone than most of us can with a computer, they do come into the fire service very different from those of us who spent our off days in various trades. Things that we once took for granted like starting saws, mixing fuel, and tightening and loosening fittings are no longer the normal life skills the new recruits bring with them.
Years ago, I was teaching the self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) class for our department’s recruit school. This large class of 60 was split into two groups. We brought them all together for the lecture and demo introduction to the SCBA.
We began with the cylinder and walked through each piece of the unit. Then, we moved on to its operation: how to turn the cylinder on and off, bleed down and reset the system, and take the cylinder off and put a new one on. Pretty basic, I thought.
Walking down the center of the room, I noticed more than half the class struggling to get the threads lined up and connected to the cylinder. In most of the cases, they were turning the connector the wrong way.
“Righty tighty, lefty loosey!” I reminded them. I received blank stares.
“Sir, what does that mean?” one very brave recruit had the nerve to ask.
A handful of those who knew the expression laughed. At this point, I was very curious and asked the class how many of them had ever started a lawn mower and cut grass. Only two of the 60 raised their hands. I called a tactical timeout and shifted my 20-year-old entrenched teaching method. The solution was to start simple and explain what a threaded coupling was and how it worked. Since knowledge does not equal understanding, I thought it best to start with understanding. Several swore they never had to connect any type of threaded coupling and were amazed at the difficulty.
Each recruit was equipped with a bottle of water. I asked the recruits to slide the SCBA aside and only focus on the water bottle.
“Take the cap off the water bottle,” I instructed. Each one performed the task without hesitation, thinking, or problems.
“Now, look inside the cap and look at the top of the bottle,” I said. I explained the concept of threads and grooves and had them put the cap on and take it off 10 times. Now, back to the SCBA and the cylinder. Imagine the cylinder valve is the top of the water bottle and the pack connection is the cap, I explained. We talked about the difference in sizes of threads and grooves and the importance of alignment to prevent cross threading. We slightly cross threaded on purpose so they would know what it felt like.
I asked those who got it right to help others. Within 15 minutes, the entire class had it figured out. We repeated taking the cylinder off and putting it back on 10 times. The class was now proficient enough to move on to our next challenge: the face piece connection.
Building on progress, now we had a different type of connection, the quarter turn. We had the recruits hook up and disconnect to the face piece. Although this was not as big of a struggle overall, some had difficulty. We demonstrated and taught them all to hook up the same way: regulator in the same hand, purge valve facing the same way, insert, and turn; again; and 10 times after the first correct connection, they had it.
We donned the face piece and repeated the method 10 times just to ensure there were no issues. I have never wanted to turn anyone into a robot, but at this level of learning, this was just the foundation of understanding how the system’s pieces worked. Once we had understanding, then we could move to scenarios that required some adaptability.
The tactical timeout and shift in teaching method took a total of about 30 minutes. Had we not done this and just moved on, with the recruits not having mastered these simple skills, it would have cost way more time out in the yard and quite possibly set some of them up for failure. It would be easy to just yell at them and tell them how dumb they were and move on. To my surprise, they took to the skill and mastered it rather quickly, proving to me that we just needed to change our methods to meet the needs of the new generation. This same methodology has to be employed with power tools and all the other mechanical equipment we use. I can assure you, after a week of our SCBA training, these recruits knew their equipment, could solve problems with it, could use it, and knew how to check and do some light maintenance on it. They could don and doff in the dark, upside down, sideways, and in confined spaces—with gloves on.
A few months later, I saw one of the recruits who had been in that class. I asked his lieutenant how the rookie was doing. He said the guy was struggling and could hardly remember anything. They were working with him every day on learning tools and equipment. He called him out to the engine and started asking him questions. How many feet of hose on the crosslay? How many gallons of water in the water can? Nothing. The lieutenant said, “OK, go get your SCBA.” He retrieved it and hustled back. “How much air pressure is considered a full cylinder?” “4,500 psi, sir!” “What kind of cylinder is that, and how often does it get a hydro?” “Carbon fiber and five years, sir!” “Where is the first-stage regulator?” “Right here, sir!” (correct). “Where is the second-stage regulator?” “Right here, sir!” (correct). “OK, let’s see how fast you can put it on and breathe air.” He did it in less than 20 seconds.
The lieutenant said the only thing the rookie knew well was his SCBA; everything else was a train wreck, but they were working on him. They always ended his training sessions with the SCBA to keep his confidence up. He said, “I don’t know what you did differently with him during SCBA week, but he knows that damn pack inside and out!” I said, “He’s not dumb; you just gotta change your method!”
