About three years ago, I accepted the position of fire education coordinator at Butler Tech Public Safety Education Complex in Liberty Township, Ohio. When I walked into this position, I had no clue as to what would be expected of me in terms of my responsibilities; the outgoing coordinator had left abruptly and didn’t pass on any information. So I put my head down and started to learn about the new role I had taken on.
Our school is a full-service public safety institution that runs three civilian fire/rescue academies a year–which turned out to be the bulk of my responsibility. I was also tasked with making several changes, fixing a handful of problems and adding new educational opportunities to our program. With these things in mind, I sat down and started to prioritize, or triage, a growing list of personal concerns. In this article, I’ll spend some time discussing three items that were at the top of my list and ended up teaching me a lot about safety, health and welfare, and the education of my students.
Lesson 1: Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
When I moved into the position of coordinator, I learned quickly that I was going to have an uphill battle when it came to PPE, because I was in charge of maintaining, repairing, cleaning and purchasing all of it.
At the time, most of my stock came from department donations; only a few items were purchased new from a manufacturer. I had approximately 120 sets of donated turnouts on hand that ranged in size and condition; some were issuable while others needed to be destroyed (some of this gear had been used by the school for several years). The obvious thing for me to do was to destroy the gear I couldn’t get repaired and start from there.
Once that was accomplished, I started talking with fellow instructors who were in charge of turnout gear at their departments and began to formulate a plan. I started by removing gear that had been used for more than 10 years, which decreased my PPE supply to about 40 sets of issuable gear and limited sizes.
This left me wondering how these remaining sets were taken care of: Were they washed according to NFPA 1851: Standard on Selection, Care, and Maintenance of Protective Ensembles for Structural Fire Fighting and Proximity Fire Fighting? Were they repaired according to the same standard? How many fires had the gear been exposed to?
Further, what were my options at this point to guarantee the safest training environment for the recruits and to lessen the liability on Butler Tech?
- Option 1: Purchase and maintain new PPE for the recruits. Yes, this would be nice, but the wear and tear on PPE from just one fire academy can be enough to decommission a set of turnouts.
- Option 2: Require all students to have a sponsorship from local departments, which would provide them turnouts, along with all the appropriate documentation on the turnout gear to show that it’s being maintained to NFPA 1851.
- Option 3: Renting/leasing sets of gear from a commercial provider who can show all the documentation to satisfy our requirements for our student’s safety.
Why did I consider Option 3? For one, the cost of the rental/lease, which could be built into the tuition and was less than having an NFPA 1851-certified repair specialist to come to the school and repair damaged gear.
Last year, after trying two companies, one local and one regional, we implemented the rental program. We have now run six fire rescue academies and have had no issues regarding unsafe gear. Note: Neither the school nor the student holds any financial responsibility for damage to the gear as a result of training; however, the student can be held responsible if their actions cause undue wear and damage to the ensemble.
We also noted a drastic change in course evaluations on the topic of equipment. Prior to the implementation of the rental program, we would take a beating on end-of-class evaluations referencing turnout gear.
Another unexpected benefit: The uniformity in PPE colors and styles of gear helped create a team atmosphere.
Lesson 2: Physical Fitness
Prior to becoming coordinator, physical training (PT) in the academy program was done on a voluntary basis. I served as one of the PT instructors when I started at the school, and at best we had about 90 percent of our full-time academy students participating in morning PT and about 25 percent of our part-time students who were taking the Firefighter I and II portion of the academy.
With the importance of fitness and wellness in today’s fire service, I began the process of making the PT portion of the academy mandatory for both the full-time and part-time students. To help support my case for making PT mandatory, I made note of a few observations:
- There was a noticeable difference between the students who participated in the current program on the drill field and those who didn’t. Students who participated were able to sustain the pace of the drill without being exhausted at the end of the day.
- Students who didn’t participate suffered more injuries than those who did.
As I ran my idea up the proverbial flag pole, I hit a few bumps in the road, but with my supporting observations, I was eventually able to implement the mandatory PT program.
The daily schedule we’ve created allows for 60—90 minutes of PT first thing in the morning. We do a combination of circuit training, fire-service-relevant exercises, cardio (running) and Firefighter Combat Challenge exercises. We’ve also added PT that’s geared toward the Candidate Physical Ability Test (CPAT) to help prepare our students for pre-employment physical testing.
Our PT program continues to evolve as we are currently considering adding nutrition, cardiovascular disease awareness and back injury prevention to our current curriculum.
Lesson 3: Continuity of Instruction
One challenge that any program coordinator faces involves continuity of instruction from one instructor to the next. In our system, we have a full-time director who oversees both Fire/EMS programming, a part-time fire education coordinator and adjunct fire instructors.
The problem we were running into was initially discovered on the daily evaluations turned in by the students at the end of the day: they were being taught four or five different ways. As with any organization that uses adjunct instructor cadres, the instructors were teaching the skills the way they do them at their home department. This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, except when dealing with a brand new recruit who’s fresh off the street.
It’s our job to provide students with all the information in the necessary textbooks, as well as cover all the skills set forth by the state and NFPA 1001: Standard for Fire Fighter Professional Qualifications. But how do you find a way to keep everyone on target? We were able to do this via the curriculum we added to our program, which has an online component that includes all the teaching materials for lecture and skill drills. The online component also allows the students to see the same information so they can prepare for upcoming classes and skills.
Shortly after we implemented this program, we received much more positive feedback from students. (We still get some complaints, but they’ve drastically decreased.) Feedback from the instructors has also been positive and actually helped take the guesswork out of what we need to accomplish on the drill field.
Another benefit for the instructor: They can prepare for their class from anywhere they can get Internet access. For students, since we started using this asset, their grades and skill ability have improved, and they’ve grown accustomed to computer-based testing, which is how certification exams are now given.
Class Dismissed
These are just some of the lessons I’ve learned since accepting the position of fire education coordinator at Butler Tech. I could write about a few more, but the three above deal with student health, safety and an optimal learning environment, which are, in my opinion, the three most important things for new recruits to understand and experience.
I’m sure there are many more lessons to come in my career, both at the school and at the fire department. But just like I tell all of my students who come through our programs, it’s important to “never stop learning.”
Stay safe and keep training.
