NFA Planning 3 Courses for Volunteers
Under its new leadership, the United States Fire Administration is taking specific action to meet the educational needs of the nation’s volunteer fire fighters.
As a result of a meeting of volunteer fire service leaders called by USFA Administrator Gordon E. Vickery in Washington on April 9, the National Fire Academy will offer three 12-hour courses designed for volunteer fire fighters. The courses will cover managing the fire scene, administration of volunteer fire departments, and leadership styles.
There is only one hitch at this time. The offering of the courses hinges on the availability of funds for conducting them. USFA officials expect that the funds will be available, but they have yet to be identified and assigned to this educational project. If funding is obtained, the courses are expected to be offered this fall.
Three locations
Lyle Goodrich, a NFA consultant who was the academy’s first deputy superintendent, explained that the three courses are expected to train a total of 100 persons in three locations, one in the East, another in the Midwest and a third in the West.
The three courses will be offered in a “train-the-trainer mode,” which means that 100 persons who will attend these courses will be expected to train others. If each person trained in these courses attains the goal of training 300 others, then 30,000 volunteer fire fighters will receive NFA-sponsored training within a year.
The decision to offer the courses on a train-the-trainer basis allays an extended and vigorous criticism of this year’s NFA courses by the International Association of Fire Service Instructors and especially by the state directors section of the ISFSI. The decision is a return to the original objective of the academy, as expressed in its early days, to offer most courses to train instructors who would then instruct others.
Those who attended the meeting at the USFA offices in Washington were E. James Monihan of Lews, Del., chairman of the National Volunteer Fire Council; James Morgan, past chairman of the National Volunteer Fire Council; Louis J. Amabili, president of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors and director of the Delaware State Fire School; Lawrence W. Davis, Jr., of Canonsburg, Pa., chairman of the volunteers section of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors; and Donald D. Flinn, general manager of the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
Vickery joins meeting
They met with Goodrich for a full day to discuss the volunteers’ needs and ways of fulfilling them. Vickery, who joined the meeting for a short time, assured the volunteer fire service representatives that volunteers were high in the new administration’s plans.
One of the complaints voiced at the meeting was that when NFA courses were presented by state training programs, there was no way of indicating that the students had attended a course prepared by the national academy. Goodrich responded to this criticism by saying that a system will be developed to allow state directors of training to affix an NFA seal to state certificates awarded to those who pass NFA courses presented in state programs.
