Where is your training center? Don’t answer just yet. You might be thinking that I am talking of a fixed or acquired training area where you “light it and fight it” again and again or perhaps a place you can fill with artificial smoke to practice your search/SCBA skills. However, hopefully, you will agree that all of us, from the newest firefighter to the saltiest chief, have a training center located between our brain and our heart. Anyone with at least one-tenth of one percent of the passion for and interest in the protection of friends and neighbors has a “training center,” and it has nothing to do with a concrete building.
Now the question is, Why don’t more of us attend regular, relevant training sessions with our respective departments? Perhaps we can narrow it down to three reasons: boredom, schedules, and motivation.
Boredom. We all have periods of boredom within our departments. How many times have you trained on loading hose, moving ladders, and changing out cylinders? Plenty, right? If you have, and I honestly hope so, have you considered spicing it up a bit? Think back to your last fire-what skills and techniques were well performed? Have you tried to replicate that success afterward? This could be a way to show those who were not there how well it went and at the same time provide some really positive ego stroking for those who performed their duties well. At least once in our careers, we are all guilty of focusing on the negatives of our past operations. Why can’t we also reinforce the positives? Perhaps we can quell the boredom monster while reinforcing and sharing the good stuff, as well as adding advanced skills practice to our training events.
Schedules. Most people have really busy and productive lives between family and work obligations. How do your training/meeting schedules look? Do they bounce around, or are they set on specific dates each month? Maybe you have one fixed meeting and several “meandering dates” each month to accommodate members’ work and family schedules. Do you schedule, publish, deliver, and announce these sessions with at least two weeks’ notice? Whatever way you schedule your events, is it relatively consistent? Perhaps more important, is it supported and followed up by the folks higher in the chain of command? If you have a functional scheduling system the chief or officers don’t deem compulsory (or important), you may not get very far.
Motivation. With positive support, consistent scheduling, and pumped-up positive training sessions, motivation can be the much sought after perpetual-motion machine. Although in the world of physics free energy is a tangible impossibility, motivation can release your brakes, send you down the road of success, and let you have a great time getting there. A motivated, positive group has the innate ability to attract more people, typically those of like mind, drive, and desire. What’s the key? You! Can you establish a culturally accepted “training center” for your department, leaving the doors open for more people; create training sessions from positive experiences; and perhaps be keen to the extreme for the time and opportunity to move beyond the basics without forgetting them? If I were to place a wager on this one, it would be on your accomplishments.
Success, whether with your family, occupation, vocation, or position within creation, is not the result of spontaneous combustion: You must set yourself on fire (stop, drop, and roll is not suggested for this theoretical fire). With a little more determination, “enforced flexibility,” and the great attitudes we all possess-but sometimes fail to share with those around us-perhaps our fire of success will spread to others. Keep an eye on your “training center,” share it with others, and don’t just keep it safe: Make it safe. All who know you expect to hear from you-not your obituary-what you did at the last emergency.
FRANK HAMMOND, the Region I training program manager with Maine Fire Training at Southern Maine Community College, is a 23-year veteran of the fire service and a call lieutenant with the Lincoln (ME) Fire Department. He is a certified fire officer I, a fire instructor II, and an emergency medical technician. He has a degree in fire science.
