Guest Commentary

Safety & Training

This week's commentary was received from last week's notes on firefighter safety which can be found by hitting the previous button above. Ted Cocco, Training Officer for The Providence RI Fire Department sent in and wants to share these following thoughts with us.

 

Thanks Ted for your input.

 

 It is important to focus on safety with every class that is taught.
Everything that we do involves safety issues, form storing mops and brooms, running in the station
to get to the truck and operating at fires.

 

As a training Officer it is my job to look at all the safety issues that effect my firefighters.

We always have to look at how firefighters are being killed, the Fire Service changes rapidly and our skills need to be updated and refined on a regular basis.

 

I would suggest that EVERYONE review the annual report on firefighter deaths.

Most deaths (but not all) to firefighters can be reduced usually by training.

 

Look at the root of this problem.

An example may be the apparatus hit a car and killed a civilian.

Well let's look at the problem.

What caused the accident? Speed did
Why was the truck going so fast? Didn't realize I was going that fast.
Why didn't you realize you were going so fast? I was concentrating on getting there fast?

The siren was on, I was thinking about where the street was, the officer said to step on it,
Why did you hit the car? I couldn't stop.
Why couldn't you stop, I was going to fast.

Why didn't you realize you were going to fast?
No one told me how to recognize I was going to fast.

HENCE a training problem.

LOOK AT THE WHOLE PICTURE!!

"When things go good it is because of training, when things go bad it is because of
a lack of training", (Ted Cocco 2000)so why does training take a back seat to all other operations?

Think about that!!