HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

Let me end the year 2001 by sharing a statement of my personal beliefs with each of you. This is a core belief, one that I feel lies at the heart of all other for which we might strive. I strongly believe that training lies at the heart of everything good and proper in the fire service.

I have believed this for a long time now. I been an active member of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors for more than twenty-five years, and I see training as the one single, critical element in everything that we do. I picked up this passion for training from a number of people who seemed to be wandering in the wilderness of ignorance and neglect for decades.

These fine folks would include Keith Royer and Floyd Nelson from Iowa. Others among them would surely include Lloyd Layman from Parkersburg, West Virginia, Hal Richman, originally from the great Memphis Fire Department, and Bill Clark from New York (and a whole host of other places).

These folks believed that a properly trained firefighter was the most effective weapon in our country’s fire protection arsenal. For many of today’s chiefs, training seems like a late 20th century invention. But I think that we all know better.

Just how far back in recorded history do we have to go to justify this belief? How far back can we find evidence that justifies our belief in the critical importance of training as an element of organizational success?

It was this very thought that came into my mind the other night as I sat enjoying another evening of programming on the History Channel. The particular program in question involved a discussion of the Holy Roman Empire. In particular, they were presenting a program that dealt with the success of the Roman Army.

Can you guess what the researchers who created the show found to be at the root of the Roman Army’s success? You’ve got it: Training. The show covered the emphasis that was placed on both basic training and continuing training.

According to the show, the recruits for the Army had to pass through a grueling four-month long period of training. Once the recruit soldier was graduated into the ranks of a particular legion, the training continued. The long-term success of the Roman Army revolved around the continual practice of the necessary war-fighting skills, so critical to their campaigns around the world.

A later episode of the same series indicated that the later failures that led to the fall of the Roman Empire came, in part, because of a slacking off in the strict training regimen that led to their earlier successes.

I am afraid that we in today’s fire service are falling victim to a similar problem. In many places, we seem to be doing a decent job of training our new people. However, once the troops are shipped out to go to work in the trenches, we have found that they are often left to drift.

Their individual skill sets can vary greatly, depending on their luck in coming into contact with a good officer. During my time in the fire service, I have seen a great variation in training regimens in the same organization. We need to take a more standardized approach.

There are standards that tell us what we need to teach our firefighters. Do we perform our educational duties in a dedicated manner, or do we give our training commitment a lick and a promise? I suggest that each and every one of us can do more.

Personally, I intend to redouble my efforts in the coming year. I have let certain parts of my individual skill set coast for a while. I intend to spend more time in class, and at drills next year. I need to spend a few quiet afternoons during the early part of 2002 going over the operational procedures for a couple of really neat Mack pumpers. I need to knock the rust off of my skills as a pump operator.

Those of you who are responsible for your departmental training programs need to be sure that you are covering the full range of skills that your troops need, based upon actual identifiable programmatic requirements.

I have seen a great many fire department officers that had a personal preference for a particular part of the operation that they were good at. These folks tended to dwell on the areas that they knew best, rather than making an across the board effort to cover all of the skills that their members needed. This is a mistake, but think about it folks, we can change, can’t we?

Here we stand folks. We are perched on the doorstep of yet another New Year. Let us all pause for a moment. Let us take the mental eraser that we have been granted and wipe the slate of our fire service lives clean. A new year approaches. Let us move beyond our mistakes, biases, warts, and blemishes of the past. Why not approach the New Year ahead of us with a fresh view of how things should be?

We in the United States have the greatest of a rights, freedoms, and privileges of any country on the face of the earth. I urge you to consider exercising one of the greatest, but most difficult of all of these blessings. Let us all vow to exercise the right to change our minds. Let us all vow to move from the passive enjoyment of the world around us. Let us all choose to become active participants in the fire service.

As we begin our journey into a new year, let me begin by thanking the people in the fire and emergency service world who are the purveyors of knowledge and skill. Without the folks who make it their business to share knowledge with their fellow travelers in the fire service, we would surely be mired somewhere in the darkness of the past.

Let me also take the time to thank my friend, Chief Ron Coleman, President of FETN for his stirring recommendations in the December issue of Fire Chief Magazine. In his "Chief’s Clipboard" commentary he speaks to the need for a Training Officer in every fire department. It is a pleasure to see a man of Chief Coleman’s stature step forward and set the record straight. Every fire department needs, at the absolute minimum, a training officer. Better yet a training staff.

Unfortunately, the heads of far too many fire departments do not agree with Chief Coleman and I. These living and breathing anachronisms are a throw back to an earlier period of ignorance. These folks are mired down in some past period of darkness and medieval folly.

Far too many people look at training as a frill, rather than a necessity. I really do not understand how some people expect to be able to perform the wide range of tasks people expect them to deliver as local fire departments.

These morons act as though knowledge were some free-floating object in space. They act as though the concept of literary and conceptual osmosis were at work within their communities. They believe that as their fire people move through space, facts are bouncing off of them. In some cases the facts pass through the skulls of their firefighters and lodge within the folds of their cerebral gray matter.

These folks believe in a wide variety of quaint old tales, such as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and learning without training. Or so you might think, given their absolute distain for their training divisions. These people do not provide enough people, resources, or money.

We cannot have a well-trained, effective and efficient fire service just by wishing for it. I urge you to include among your New Year’s Resolutions a couple of bullet points that deal with training. Repeat after me… I hereby promise in 2002 to:

Create a training officer’s position, if none exists. Attend one major fire service training conference (And actually go to the classes). Send as many of my firefighters and officers to a conference as funds permit (and fight for more money). Spend more time reading in professional journals. Spend more time training in a topic where my skills are weak. Spend more money on my training program.

These are the necessary steps. I you really want to commit to a better training program for your people and your department, these steps form the minimum requirements for you.

If you are sincere about doing the right thing, you will do these things. If you are in this business for all you can get for yourself, you may not do the right thing. You can lie to yourself, but your people will know. And without the dedicated efforts of your troops, you will fail.

Your personal empire, like the Roman Empire before it, will fade like the setting sun. You will be remembered as the local Nero, who fiddled while your fire department burned down around you.

Training is the key. Embrace it while there is still time.

Happy New Year!

The commentary in this column does not necessarily reflect those of Firehouse.Com, Firehouse Magazine, their employees or parent company Cygnus Business Media. Harry R. Carter, Ph.D., MIFireE, is an internationally known municipal fire protection consultant and contributing editor to Firehouse Magazine. He recently retired as a Battalion Commander with the Newark, New Jersey Fire Department. His commentary appears regularly on Firehouse.Com. For more commentary and information, visit Carter's web site at www.harrycarter.com Harry has published several books available for online ordering, including Firefighting Strategy and Tactics and Management in the Fire Service