2016 Refresher Training

Pond Hill-Lily Lake completed our annual yearly refresher training to kick off the 2016 training year!  This training is focused on providing all of our members a core skills refreshment along with preparing them for the new set of training to come.  Our officers also use this as an opportunity to pick out weaknesses and focus on those problematic skills more with upcoming training.

This training session includes a brief SCBA drill that started with the proper donning of gear and SCBA units.  Members are spilt into pairs and required to fully don their TOG (Turn Out Gear) and SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) and then give each other a “buddy check” to confirm everything is properly in place.  This is how we encourage our members to don gear during an active incident, as even the most seasoned fire fighter can make a simple mistake at 3am after days/weeks of down time.  Once this session has been completed, members practice basic RIT and self-rescue techniques that vary each year.  This year, members practiced swapping out a downed fire fighter’s SCBA pack without removing his/her mask to complete the change.  While Pond Hill-Lily Lake is not a RIT (Rapid Intervention Team) department, we do train for providing injured/downed fire fighters air during situations that can happen to our members and our neighboring departments before a RIT department arrives.

Once members have reviewed their SCBA skills, our training turns towards pumping.  Members went to Lily Lake and connected our Tanker to the dry hydrant to begin flowing water.  In order to challenge members, our Engine was relayed with the Tanker and members were given both a static (suctioning from a dry hydrant) and pressurized (getting water pumped from our tanker) water source to train with.  Training consisted of multiple water supply changes and issues that required the pump operator to adapt to the situation.  Along with basic multiple attack line pumping tactics and equipment use, such as the deck gun and Blitz Fire.  With our department being primarily focused on Engine Operations (getting water on and to the fire), this session of our refresher is the main focus and most time consuming.

With our official training days starting January 24th, with our SCBA Awareness Training followed by January 31th with our SCBA Challenge Course, we hope to once again improve our departments ability to serve the surrounding communities.  This year also marks a special year for our new training program, as we will be purchasing multiple training based manikins to greatly expand our abilities.  Keep checking back for details of these training days and how your department can join in.

We would like to thank everyone who allow our training to be a success, and also thank the members for their near 100% participation within our training.  Our membership levels may be low, but we will always pride ourselves with completing the tasks of many with only a few.