Fire Department Training
Fire and Emergency Medical Services Training
The Racine Fire Department places an extremely high value on fire and EMS training. This is what makes us so darn good. Repetition, and the introduction of new skills on a regular basis keeps our members in touch with the current best practices in fire suppression and Advanced Life Support. One Division Chief of Training is dedicated to coordinating and teaching of fire fighting skills, while the other Division Chief of EMS is dedicated to coordinating and teaching Emergency Medical Services, and Paramedic skills. Each area has specific annual requirements. Our goal is a competency based modelPI Accident 3 of education where each fire fighter or paramedic periodically demonstrates competency in fire fighting and EMS. This competency-based model requires hours of classroom training on an annual basis.
The fire department also has takes advantage of low or no cost training opportunities available on a regional, state and nationwide basis. A prime example is training sponsored by Wisconsin Emergency Management (WEM) and the National Fire Academy (USFA-NFA).
Best Practices
The problem-solving model used in non-emergency situations consists of five areas where we focus our efforts on preventing problems within the organization.
- Hiring the right individual for the job
- Clearly stating our expectations and policies
- Providing ample training opportunities to develop proficiency
- Providing members with leadership guidance to perform well
- Assuring that members know when they have performed outside the expectation
The model for emergency decision-making is called the Incident Command System (ICS). ICS is the most current operating system available, and allows us to...
History as a Teacher
History is a wonderful teacher. Our job is to look at history to make predictions on future events and possibilities. In addition we must make basic assumptions on future budgetary trends based on current experience. Here are some key points when predicting the future based on history
- There is no crystal ball. We cannot physically foresee what the future will bring.
- Past incident data tells us what has happened
- Past incident data teaches us how to handle similar incidents in the future
- We can make reasonable predictions on future events but there are no guarantees about what we can expect at any given time, on any given day of the week.
- Bad things happen in good cities. Are we prepared and properly staffed?
- Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat history! (Edward Burke 1729-1797)
- The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions. (Claude Levi-Strauss)
- Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. (Thomas Alva Edison)
