The bulk of firefighter basic training, whether it is delivered by a fire department, a community college or a third-party trainer, is not good. Much of the fire service does a really bad job training prospective/ probationary firefighters.

There are many reasons for this. The factor that gets most overlooked
is the push for firefighters to certify. The requirement by many municipalities, for certification prior to entry into the fire service has ensured that training is done in a check the box format with little attention paid to the delivery of high- quality realistic training.

Instead of being delivered by professional instructors who are good at the job and understand how skills are mastered; fire fighter basic training is too often taught by weak instructors who insist on teaching, |by the book so students can pass skills testing rather than learn to preform skills effectively and in coordination with other skills.

Certification is little more than a participation medal. The willingness to certify recruit firefighters prior to mastering all the skills, paired with the drop in fire duty experienced by many fire departments has led to a generally unskilled fire service. It’s played a role in firefighter injuries and deaths and has been responsible for civilians not being rescued. Many feel the certification process is harmless in its effect on the fire service.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Imagine this: you arrive at a fire in the kitchen located at the back of a single-family dwelling. You’re backing up a newly hired firefighter on the nozzle. You force the door, while your probie flakes out the attack line. Thick black smoke pushes out the door. The probie cracks the line to let a little water bleed out the end of the nozzle and quickly closes it. He starts to crawl down the hallway towards the kitchen while you feed hose at the door. Your probie makes it about six feet down the hallway and stops, the lines not flowing. Suddenly your probie is returning to the door with the nozzle, |its too hot.

This scenario plays out every year all over North America because new firefighters are being taught not to open the nozzle until they see
fire. This has been responsible for firefighters being burned and, in some cases, killed. It has led to delays in rescuing trapped occupants as firefighters have been forced to back out.

IFSTA Essentials fourth edition |my textbook when I started| followed, |Unless a protective stream of water is needed, do not open the nozzle until fire is encountered. The textbook and many instructors failed to explain, in the absence of visible flame, when a |protective stream of water would be needed.

In Ontario the certifying body is The Ontario Office of the Fire Marshal. Firefighters are tested on NFPA 1001 skills, utilizing the Ontario Fire Marshall’s skills package. One of
the check boxes for the skill sheet, Attacking an Interior Structure Fire states, Does not apply water until fire is encountered.

This is being taught because in the absence of experience, fire instructors will default to what they believe the book says combined with their personal experience fighting pallet fires in their training tower. The fire service is plagued with terrible instructors.

Worse than the instructors that simply don’t know any better are fire instructors, that know better, but insist on teaching skills by the book so students/recruits can pass the certifying body’s skills testing. If you will never preform a skill at a real building fire the way the textbook describes; that’s not firefighting by the book. Any fire instructor that has ever told students/recruits, we have to teach you this way, but out in the field here’s how you will actually do it, needs to stop teaching firefighters.

Performing a skill |by the book means preforming a skill the way that good firefighters in your area generally execute a given skill at an emergency. By the book firefighting evolved and continues to evolve by the fire ground experiences gained from firefighters working in busy departments. That information filters out to firefighters in the region that might not see as much firefighting duty.

Within the last 15 years, because of the internet, evolving tactics and skills are now shared with all the firefighting brotherhood rather than regionally. Conventional forcible entry is a great example of this. Busy fire departments in large urban areas, over thousands of responses, developed a standard approach to forcing doors. This information began to filter out of the big cities to smaller fire departments and GAP, SET, FORCE became the |by the book| way to force doors for many fire departments.

This was happening well ahead of the textbooks containing any useful information on forcing locked doors.

Void of enough collective fire ground experience to develop a by the book approach to a skill, fire instructors will develop a procedure based on training in concrete burn towers, or worse, the parking lot or apparatus bay of the fire station.

Fog for protection is the perfect example of this. Fog for protection did not come from real firefighting. It came from instructors with little fireground experience trying to adapt make-belief fire school training to the real building fire environment.

If you’re teaching students to crawl around inside a smoke charged building searching for fire and not open the nozzle until they see fire; what do they do when the whole room lights off around them?

The answer to the problem was adapted from utilizing fog patterns
to isolate a valve on the propane Christmas tree prop. If it worked
on the propane Christmas tree, why wouldn’t it protect firefighters caught in a flashover?

By the book firefighting is not developed at the training academy. Another glaring example, still featured in textbooks, pictures of firefighters crawling through an empty building, holding onto each other’s ankles, while sweeping the floor for victims with a pike pole. This is still being taught! When you press an instructor on why they are teaching this, their stock answer is always, |We have to teach them this way so they can pass the skills testing for certification.

First off, I believe, if you’re trying to behave in a way that is consistent with the traditional fire service values that made our service so great: courage, integrity, honesty, dedication, hard work, you would never accept that as an excuse to deliver bad training. Another reason this excuse frequently gets used is to save a fire instructor from having to do work.

Good training is a lot of work.

Instructors frequently have students preform skills NOTHING like how the skills are actually preformed in an effort to get all the skill sheet check boxes checked with the least amount of effort possible. Pushing a steel roof hatch open with a pike pole and calling it overhaul doesn’t make it overhaul, for example.

The next comment that typically follows, |we have to teach to the skills sheets, is almost always, they will be trained by their fire department when they get hired. Will they?

Many small departments that hire 2 or 3 firefighters at a time will not run a recruit class. If a prospective firefighter has a certificate that says they have mastered all the skills necessary to be a firefighter should they need to participate in a 14-week recruit class? Even if a newly hired firefighter gets hired in a city that runs a recruit class, training typically mirrors college and third-party training companies with the focus on getting all the skills sheets, the same skills they were supposed to have learned at Public and Private Fire Colleges, checked off with the least amount of work.

Another issue with the certification process is the time frame in
which the training is supposed to take place. There is no way a fire student can master the skills listed in firefighter II in a year or less; yet many cities require this certification as eligibility for application. The NFPA 1001 standard never intended that a firefighter recruit master all firefighter I and II knowledge and skills in this time frame.

One of the firefighter II skills in the standard involves supervising a crew for an interior attack. This should involve a certain amount of experience and training prior to being signed off. Small departments that do not get many fires would have to supplement fire ground experience with realistic training in acquired structures. This can’t be accomplished in a year or in some cases a two-week firefighter I and II course.

Yet, Proboard, IFSAC, State and Provincial testing bodies allow this
to continue. Many fire service members I have spoken with on the issue believe certification represents that a firefighter has the requisite knowledge and has been exposed to the skills to a certain degree. When they are hired it is up to them and their Fire Department to hone and perfect those skills. Of course, all firefighters should regularly maintain and refine their skill sets, however this point of view is misguided for a number of reasons. To begin with, the certification process in most States and Provinces requires candidates master all skills just to be eligible to test for certification.

In the Province of Ontario, the second page of the Ontario Fire Marshall’s skill sheet package says:

The Lead Instructor must verify that each skill sheet in this booklet has been signed and indicates that the student has successfully mastered the skill. During skills testing for certification, firefighter recruits are expected to correctly complete all steps listed in the skills sheets to pass.

If all steps have to be successfully completed to pass the skill this would indicate that the student/recruit is expected to master the skill to earn certification. If certification merely represents exposure to a skill, why have any skills testing at all?

The Fire Service, for convenience, has decided that certification should represent nothing more than participation. This is a way to avoid investing the time and the hard work necessary to develop effective firefighters. The Fire Service needs to take an honest look at itself.

If shift supervisors (Platoon Chiefs, District Chiefs) were to visit all the fire stations in their area and ask Company Officers what they had done with their people that day; the answer from too many would be – nothing.

The certification process plays a large role in this because, for many, the perception is once they have achieved certification there is nothing left to learn.

This problem plagues our fire service; ten-year certified firefighters that have not improved their knowledge and skills from what they learned during their initial training. In many cases their skills are worse than when they started. The reality of the situation is a good portion of the fire service is not honing and perfecting their skills. This makes it even more crucial that firefighters initial training be as high quality, thorough and realistic as possible. If probationary firefighters were required to study and practice every shift to master all skills to obtain certification, we would have a fire service with an infinitely higher degree of skill. Certification is only important if it represents skills mastery anything less sets firefighters up for failure on the fireground.

In general, the Fire Service is developing fire fighters with
very unstable foundations and the certification process plays a significant role. Public and Private Fire Colleges, Senior Firefighters, Fire Instructors, Company Officers, Fire Chiefs, and Municipalities owe it to our new firefighters to provide them with the foundational skills necessary to be successful as a probationary firefighter.

Obtaining a NFPA 1001 FF II Certificate is not useful to a new firefighter. The time wasted |touching on| firefighter II skills during a prospective firefighter’s basic training could be put to better use perfecting firefighter I skills.

Fire Chiefs and Municipalities should eliminate FF II Certification as a requirement for eligibility to apply.

As stated earlier in this article there is no way a candidate has come anywhere close to mastering the firefighter II skills during a year or less firefighter preservice program. The certifying bodies need to stop allowing one year or less firefighter preservice programs test for firefighter II.

Colleges and third-party trainers are grossly exaggerating the number
of hours students are spending completing the practical portion of their training.

If a college or third-party trainer wanted to be eligible for firefighter II testing this should only be possible following an in-depth application process and audit by the certifying body. The course would have to be longer than one year and, in my opinion, need to involve some type of live fire training in acquired structures.

In most cases HAZMAT Operations and firefighter II training and certification should be conducted by a newly hired firefighter’s fire department. Probationary firefighters should be required to study and practice firefighter II and HAZMAT Operations skills and knowledge over the period of their class changes; with the goal of certifying in order to become a first-class firefighter.

This would set new firefighters on the right path by showing them
that being good at the job means being dedicated to career long learning and practice. This can only be accomplished by revising the certification process.

Certification has to mean something; it has to be about mastering the skills. Skills taught and performed the right way.