Are You A Self Starter
Have you come up with a cool idea for training? How about a project idea that will improve the firehouse? The volunteer fire service needs more self starters. Too often we rely on our Chiefs or Company Officers to get the ball rolling on projects and ideas. Other times we have motivated Firefighters who want to initiate a new project, but the Chief won’t allow them to shine.
Back before I was promoted to Lieutenant I spent a lot of time behind the wheel of the trucks. I lived near the station and could get there fairly quick to grab the 2nd out truck. The career guy on duty was usually just leaving the station in the first out Engine when I got there. I spent several years doing this, missing a lot of interior attacks. At the time, our Assistant Chief who handled driver training moved out of town so the training program was sort of nonexistent. There were a few missing key elements in the training, some drivers were messing up at incidents, water was getting lost and our members were getting ordered out of fire buildings because of a lack of water. I thought to myself…what is the solution to this?
I drafted up a new driver training program that required more than the 100 mile standard. There were skills involved. Each truck had a packet. Each driver had their own binder with the packets. Each packet had a practice section where they would log their miles, log their hours, check off each skill as they practiced and some safety tips. When they practiced each skill enough to where they got it down perfectly, they were tested on each skill and the test was placed in their binder. I drafted this entire program up myself. This was in 2008 and the Chief’s loved it! They immediately put it into place and to this day is still the official Driver Training Program for our Fire Department.
Self starters push the fire departments to the next level of progression. Without them, things may never change and the work loads will be left on the Chiefs and maybe the Company Officers. Now, as a Lieutenant and part of the Driver Training Committee, I encourage members to be self starters. I use this as an example and hope that they will take their visions and do something with them.
Another fine example was done this past summer. One of our members created an assignment board, and an equipment status board to go along with it. We haven’t had a truck assignment board in our station since the 70s. Nobody asked him to do it, he just got the idea and went to work. I came into the station one day and there it was.
If you prevent your members from being self starters, they won’t have that sense of ownership to the Fire Department that we need to allow them to have.
