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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Several new blogs - one on Charleston

Guys you gotta read this.

There are a few new blogs out there and I have added them to the blogroll to the right.

Somewhat new and new to many of you are:
Firefighter Hourly.com
FireGeezer.com
First In Blog
On The Job (One Firefighter's Notebook)
Fire Sprinklers
Friction Loss On Charleston

One of them really stands out though.

Read this:

That's Dumb

Sometimes I'm asked if it's really that bad at the city. Well...yeah. But, the moron continues, everything appears to be in top shape. My response is that Germany looked well to some people under Hitler, China under Mao, and Cambodia under Pol Pot.

See, if you take a dump and spray paint it white, well, it's still shit. You can dress up stuff just so long and then the dam breaks. Just like Milli Vanilli. That's us. The Milli Vanilli Fire Department.


He is writing about the Charleston Fire Department. This is his department, although I think he is retired. The blog is his rant space. The rants are not in vain though, and not necessarily due to the terrible loss of life that the CFD just experienced. More so, it has been developed because there are things that apparently many members have been screaming about for a long time. Issues that need to be fixed and haven't. These issues have come to light because of the 9 LODD firefighters and the fact that the department is under a microscope. HOWEVER, their Fire Chief is claiming that all is well in Charleston.

His writings are somewhat hilarious at first, but the problems he speaks of are no laughing matter. Check out the comments too.

Read on:
Friction Loss On Charleston
Wherein a man with a bad attitude looks at lunacy.


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rhett, I sat down and read Friction Loss On Charleston. I read the post and comments. I said to myself they sound a lot like us. They talk about training being a big problem. I don't hear a lot of that from us. Do you think something like charleston is waiting on the horizon. I have been told that our recuit schools are a joke. And I would say some company officers don't train with the newer guys because the are sorry or they think recuit school showed them everything they need to know.

Anonymous said...

Rhett, I also looked at firefighter hourly and they talk about the command staff not wearing there PPE and the firefighters not wearing it the right way. I know we have all seen chiefs on a large fire we had a few weeks ago and others in the past doing the same. I will say for the most part the firefighters in Roanoke do wear their PPE and wear it the right way.

Anonymous said...

I would say that the recruit school is not a joke. They give you the tools for the job, but is up to every new recruit to press his or her officers for more knowledge and training.

Anonymous said...

don't you think it is the responsabilty of the officers to train the people that work under them? Does a new person know the right ?s to ask? In recruit school i was told to be seen not heard. I would think most people would not speak up about training because of coments like that.

FireFleitz said...

I think that there are several issues here that work against us. I definitely believe that the Company Officers are responsible for training their firefighters, or making sure they get it elsewhere.

There are only 24 hours in a day. The same amount of time in our shift. We are required to do too much in that period. There are always units out of service, making it hard to do in depth training.

I think the recruit schools are only as good as the people in them. I think that we have has some really good recruit schools in the past years.

However,

This job is what you make of it. Not everyone gets to work with a seasoned company officer who has been there and done that. So ultimately it is up to the individual to ensure they are prepared.

Anonymous said...

The day to day schedule that Admin wants us to do makes it difficult to do company level training. I would like to commend the training division for keeping the monthly training schedule open to allow for company level training and would like to see more of it. Thanks Again.

Anonymous said...

Here is my rant! Being one of those Company Officers who takes his job responsibilities seriously, I have been told that I have a reputation for being an a$$hole. One of the very first things I do is have the recruit/rookie show me that they can catch a hydrant. You would not believe the disparity in the skill levels of the different rookies. I have had some that can correctly tell you and show you everything about it. Then there are some that wouldn't know a hydrant if they were sitting on it. I don't believe that it is due to the quality of the instruction they receive in the academy as much as it is the fact that there are just too many students to give each recruit the time needed to develop the the skill sets that one would assume they would have after completing the academy. I suppose most everyone has heard about the instructors that spent a great deal of the instructional time telling the class about how great they are/were, and about all the "big" fires they were at rather than covering the topic. I suppose I could not be interested in the development or growth of these rookies, but then when we roll up into an emergency scene how could I in good faith jepardize the lives of the people we are supposed to be trained to protect and each other by not having made a reasonable effort to train the people assigned to my company. But I have had people assigned to my company return from a transfer, or an overtime shift where they worked with one of their peers to report that they felt better prepared by me and the others from their company to do their job than their peer. I am glad to see that there is now time in the training schedule for more company level training. That's enough for now. But, for those of you who know me know that I almost always have something to say about most everything. Craig Sellers.

Anonymous said...

Capt craig I think you may have hit the nail. It is my opion that you are right. No time, 17 weeks seems like a long time to train someone a job. But with all that goes on in rookie school (ie.EMT-b, vehical ex, HTR, hazmat, fire I&II, plus others.) there is not time to make the guys off the street good at the basics. If you have a big class how many turns do you get. When you get out you are suppose to know your job and have your life and the life of the guy next to you in your hands. That is why company training is so important. The guys who have been there done that will not be there to help us out forever. If you don't have experience training is the next best thing.