As a Fire Instructor since 1999, Brian Kazmierzak looks around at fire training throughout the world and sees that’s its ever changing and will continue to change rapidly in the future. Education has changed on every level. Just look around at our children and we will see textbooks have been replaced by tablets and e-readers. Paper and Pen has been replaced by instant student response systems, and folders and paper have been replaced by thumb drives and cloud storage. As education changes us around us, fire service training must change, or we will be left in the dark. According to Brian Kazmierzak, just because something worked 20 years ago, doesn’t mean it’s still going to work today!
As we all know, firefighter training is the most important aspect of the job, next to emergency response. The late Chief John Eversole of the Chicago Fire Department summed it up best when he said, “Nobody calls the fire department and says, ‘send me two dumb-ass firemen showing up in a pick-up truck’. In three minutes, they want five brain surgeon decathlon champions to come out and solve all their problems.”
This quote could not be truer today since the fire service is truly an all-hazards agency that must be able to provide true customer service to Mrs. Smith no matter if her house is on fire, she is trapped in her car from a crash, is having a heart attack, is trapped in a trench, spilled chlorine by her pool, has a water or gas leak, or is having a carbon monoxide emergency. We are expected to mitigate whatever problem Mrs. Smith has and that is where training comes to play.
In the past firefighter training has been instructor or company officer lead classroom or drill ground skills. Everyone came to a central location for training and in some cases could mark out of service during training. Unfortunately, those days are gone. As the complexity of the fire service increases, as well as more demands of service are placed upon us, training no longer can just take place in the drill ground or classroom led by the Training Division.
Training has already become more “web-based”, however, one of the common complaints Brian Kazmierzak hears from most firefighters is the fact that they want LESS web-based training and more hands-on training. Brian Kazmierzak is a believer there is a time and a place for web-based training but within reason. Good instructors will use web-based training to “FLIP” the fire service classroom. Flipped learning is a form of blended learning in which students learn new content online by watching video lectures, usually at home. What used to be homework (assigned problems) is now done in class with teachers offering more personalized guidance and interaction with students, instead of lecturing. This is also known as backwards classroom, reverse instruction, flipping the classroom and reverse teaching. Flipping the classroom can take place on many levels using commercially available products and services or as simple as a YouTube channel or more in-depth with a great Learning Management System like Target Solutions www.TargetSolutions.com. Brian Kazmierzak encourages you to look at the Kahn Academy “Flipping the Classroom” video on TED to learn more about the flipped classroom approach to training.
www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html.
The flipped classroom is perfect to use for “pre-loading” skill drills so that students get more hands-on time on the drill ground. It is also perfect to use for conducting OSHA Safety Training as well as disseminating other information that necessarily does not have to be provided in a classroom format. But we must also remember online training, or a learning management system is never a replacement for a training officer, and instructor or drill ground firefighter skills. Wearing SCBA, pulling hose, and throwing ladders along with fire attack, rapid intervention and may day drills need to still be a constant focus of our training programs.
Company Level training has to become the focus as we move into the future of the fire service. The most important training officer we have is the Company Officer. The Company Officer must be the leader in the firehouse when it comes to training and drills. No one knows the needs better of their company than the company officer. The Company Officer must OWN training and make sure every day is a training day. Training must be made a priority. Company Officers should be familiar with conducting needs assessments of their members, developing lesson plans, delivering training and evaluating skills. Performance must be documented on Job Performance Requirement Skill Sheets and must always be referenced to a NFPA standard such as 1001, 1021, 1410, etc. If Company Officers are in need of drills, www.FirefighterCloseCalls.com and its Drillmaster Forest Reeder have provided hundreds of referenced free downloadable drills found at: http://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/weeklydrills.php. Not only are there hundreds of company drills, Drillmaster Reeder has also built out the NFPA 1410 company and multi-company drills. NFPA 1410 provides fire departments with an objective method of measuring performance for initial fire suppression and rescue procedures used by fire department personnel engaged in emergency scene operations using available personnel and equipment. NFPA 1410 drills should be conducted annually by all department members and establish a great training baseline.
There is no excuse in today’s connected environment we can’t learn something new about our job every single day. Websites such as www.Firehouse.com, www.FirefighterCloseCalls.com and www.ModernFireBehavior.com are updated daily and give us a plethora of information to do our jobs safer and better. We owe it to Mrs. Smith to be better today than we were yesterday and to grow in our careers each and every day. Let’s make “Every Day is a Training Day” not just something we say, but that we truly live each time we enter the firehouse!
Another great opportunity as we continue to grow in the future of fire service training is that of simulation-based training. There are many great programs on the market today that can easily be loaded on your tablet and taken out to the street where local photos can be added, and simulations ran. Just remember you don’t need an expensive command training center to do simulation-based training. A simple tablet and an “app” are all you need. Hours of tactical discussion and learning can be had from simulation-based training; we just need to realize simulation-based training is not a video game nor is it a time to set our members up for failure through hazing. Everyone makes mistakes, so learn from them and adjust your tactics accordingly.
While Brian Kazmierzak believes we are still in a fire service civil war over the research and science that is taking place currently in structural firefighting, we ALL must come to realize, in the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “the good thing about science is, it is true whether you like it or not” and that the science of firefighting is not going away. Right now, all of the Firefighter I/II textbooks are being re-written to include the science. Officer training is now including the science in some states as part of strategy and tactics. I think we wouldn’t be in the boat today with fire science research and tactics, had we just understood the importance of the fire triangle and fire tetrahedron. When we look at those very simple aspects of fire, we should realize the only two ways we really have of combating it is to either remove or limit the air it receives or to remove the heat through cooling. As the great Tom Brennan said, but out the fire and the rest of your problems will go away.
Unfortunately, Brian Kazmierzak sees the future of live fire training as troubling. As environmental protection standards increase, it is going to make it harder and harder to burn Class A fuels and almost impossible to burn acquired structures. Live fire training is one of the most important types of trainings we have, yet those whom govern our air quality don’t necessarily agree. We must make our case for SAFE live fire training that follows NFPA 1403. Since the inception of NFPA 1403 sixteen firefighters have been killed in the line of duty during live fire training. With statistics like these, it makes it much easier for the naysayers to make the case against live fire training. As firefighters we need to be able to train in the environment, we fight in. Simulated smoke and fire only go so far, just as the military uses live ammunition and bombs on their ranges for training, we have to be able to conduct live fire training to be properly prepared to fight the situations we face.
While we all would love to be able to just do “firefighter training” we must realize that in the future our role of “all-hazard” responders will be ever growing. EMS will evolve to not just scene-based care and transport but that to community paramedicine. We are already seeing that in communities across the United States. Additionally, our role in hazardous materials as well as terrorism-based events will continue to grow as society changes. As natural resources grow scarcer, more and more chemically engineered products will be developed, causing not only hazardous material response issues, but also increased fire loads and attack issues. Mass causality incidents have now become the norm, especially in the active shooter arena. Integration with law enforcement will have to become a huge focus of training, especially in the realms of incident command, and rescue task force protocols. Technical rescue will continue to play an important part of our training as more construction occurs across the country as well as natural disasters due to our ever-changing weather patterns.
The future of fire service training folks is NOW. We must all embrace changes in learning and most of all delivery of education. Today’s student is more connected than ever. If we don’t provide the training for them, they will find it from their tablet, smart phone or computer, and what they find may not necessarily be correct. We must also remember as we enter the future of fire service training to never forget where we have come from and that hands-on firefighter skill training MUST continue to be the main focus of what we do. As firefighters, company officers, chiefs and training officers the number one most important job we have in the future of the fire service is the ability to embrace CHANGE! Charles Darwin once said, “it is not the strongest or most intelligent that survive, but those who can best manage change.”
Brian Kazmierzak 