June 2020

Radio Etiquette:

This drill is designed to be done during the quarantine. begin a group call between your crew, assign each firefighter a call sign. Have them follow proper radio etiquette as per your agencies SOP. Start simple as a basic “Hey you, its me”. Then work your way up to “calling” dispatch and giving a size up, or even requesting additional alarms for your “incident”. Get creative with this.

On the fire line, we should expect any firefighter to be able to talk on the radio. At any point your leadership could be taken out for any reason. So every firefighter should have the skills to talk on the radio. Yet this task seems to intimidate both probies, and senior firefighter alike. Biggest things to point out to the crew is to keep calm while on the radio. Nobody likes someone yelling in there ear. Take a second or two to think about what you are going to say. If your the officer, or first due to a fire, your tone of voice is going to set the tempo for the whole fire. If your talking fast, and back tracking your sentence, your crews actions will reflect that.

Please like, comment, and share this post, and let us know what your agency does for training on talking over the net.

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May 2020

Dexterity Drill:

Have your crew don their fire gloves. Put in three different areas, a nut, bolt, and washer. Have your crews practice assembling the nut, bolt, and washer together. If those materials aren’t available, you can substitute for Legos.

Dexterity is an important thing on the fire line. From putting fuel in your saw, to undoing couplings on the hose. We might be put in situations where removing our gloves isn’t a safe thing to do. Please like, comment, and share any training ideas you have.

Greetings!!!!

Greetings, all fire enthusiasts. My name is Dakota, and I am the Training Chairperson for the Michigan Prescribed Fire Council (MPFC). The idea for “10 Minutes for Training” comes from feedback that I have heard from people in the field. Firefighters (from newbie to supervisor) struggle to fit training into their schedules. There’s also a misconception of what training is. You have your conventional class room training, like S-130/190, that does take a significant chunk of time to complete. And then you are less conventional ways. Training can be as simple as practicing assembling a drip torch once a month, or sending a newbie to look through a cabinet on the engine. Or for supervisors, sending out a YouTube video on something fire for your crew to watch.

So, to meet the needs of continuing education, I’ll post trainings here once a month that will only take 10 minutes or less to do. As firefighters, we value safety first. Training is the key to maintaining safety. If taking 10 minutes a month to practice your job, it could save your life, and that is solid safety. While as the training chair and seasoned firefighter I have lots of ideas, I am very open to input/other presenters/fresh ideas. If you feel uncomfortable creating a training but have an idea, please email it and we will post it for you.

Also, keep an eye out for a training series called “Fire Line Training Time”. This will consist of videos from me, along with other firefighters, containing information about this job—from tips and tricks, to information and demonstration of different topics. This is an open forum and we’d love your input, too. If you have some tricks that you have picked up over the years, please share. If you feel like you can make a video, please send it to us, and we will post it to our page and give you credit.

While this is a product of the MPFC and its members, we welcome anyone in fire around the country to take part in these trainings.

Let us know if there’s a certain topic you want to learn about, or if there’s more content you’d like to see. Remember, we never rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training. Be safe out there.

-Dakota