Firefighting training: A detailed overview

Let's take a look at the most exciting and dangerous aspect of the training of firefighters.

To survive, a firefighter must think critically and objectively and solve problems quickly, under extreme pressure. This can be difficult especially in a real fire (more specifically those big infernos that make it to fire news), so the training instructors conduct fire drills: they purposely set fire to buildings to provide students with opportunities to develop these skills. The overall goal of behavioral firefighter training is to instill good habits in students through repeated exposure, so they can someday make fire news headlines. The fire drill is held in burning buildings; structures that are built or bought intentionally for the training of firefighters. Let's see what happens in a session of live fire training, according to the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) fire news.

A senior firefighter provides a summary of the day's activities and the students wear their high-tech, multi-layered clothes. These clothes can withstand temperatures up to 648 ° C. In addition, each firefighter uses an SCBA, which adds another 15 kg at the laundry.

Next, the students enter the burning building. Students stand on the same side of the hose and are at a distance of one arm from each other. Other students, who will not run the hose, are preparing to move the hose to the front, as the team enters the building. The team crouches to enter the area of ​​the fire, making sure to keep the hose line between them and the flames. As students approach the area that they will fight, they take their places on the line: one operates the nozzle and the support system.

The instructor allows the students to open the nozzle, for fighting the flames. Under the command of the instructor, the team closes the nozzle and positions their bodies to prevent burns on exposed skin. Then the students switch positions. The operator goes to the nozzle end of the line and all take a step forward. The team repeats this process until everyone has operated the nozzle. When one puts out the fire, the team leaves the structure quickly but safely, leaving only the operator of the nozzle and a member of the support team back. They remain in place to make sure that the fire will not restart. When they are sure that the fire has been extinguished permanently, the team works together to collect the hose line structure.

After the training exercise, the instructor gives the students feedback on performance and also check for injury. After all have been evaluated and counted, the instructor reviews the activity and provides constructive feedback.

We get to hear about a lot of incidents in the fire news everyday and little do we realize that all the heroic deeds that we get to read on fire news has its roots into some serious training and hard ,work! The job of a firefighter is very difficult and had it not been for the training institutes, we wouldn’t have been able to sleep without worries!