Experience, The Best Teacher, Pass it on
By JERRY KNAPP
Someone a lot smarter than I said this, “Experience is the best teacher, it is also the most expensive.” Every FD has members of varying ages and experience level. We all have experiences that need to be shared with other members: very valuable experiences. This is not only the gray hairs and the no hairs to the young guys. Anyone in the Fire Service for even a short time has experiences. For the probies, it maybe how they were intimidated by strength needed to operate a hose line. For more experienced members it maybe a close call on the fire ground with important lessons learned. It maybe a new tool they tried or a unique way to use a tool that was successful.
The question is how do you use this experience to help make your members better, safer and more effective Firefighters?
The answer is simple: STORY TIME. Pick a drill night when you expect bad weather, like the dead of winter or the stifling heat of summer and plan story time. Invite a couple of your more experienced members to share an experience with one or more lessons learned with those at drill. It is a round table type drill. Set up the chairs in a circle or some other comfortable set up.
Rules for story time include the following:
• Anyone can tell a story
• The story should have one or more lessons learned
• Others cannot criticize the story but can ask questions
• Stories need to be brief but complete
We were called mutual aid to a well involved strip mall fire with several stores involved. As a second due pumper we were assigned to lay a supply line from the hydrant to the rear of the building, force the back door and get water on the fire. As a young firefighter, I saw glory….pushing the hose line in the back door coming out the front in victory and advising the chief we got it for you.
It was winter and when I stepped off the engine at the hydrant I slipped on the ice and went down hard. Lesson 1. We laid in our supply line and stretched the 2 ½ to hit the fire. Truck guys got the door for us after lots of cussing, grunting and groaning. Lesson 2: Lots of locks on the back doors of strip malls. At FDIC I took a forcible entry class showing how to cut the bottom third of the door creating a “doggie door” (usually no locks there) with a saw, crawl in and unlock the door from the inside. Lesson 2A.
We pushed the line in, ahh sweet success, the vision of us coming out the front flashed thru my head, then something really heavy knocked me off my feet. Damn those light fixtures that were in the drop ceiling come back at you after you hit them with a hose line! Lesson 3 you cant see swinging fixtures in dense smoke.
We pressed in sensing success. Suddenly a large thud on our right side, the floor shakes, we retreat. Everyone is ok, lets go get it ! Lesson 4 When something that dramatic happens, you need to investigate and figure out what it was. We dust ourselves off, back in.
About halfway thru the store big thud on our left side. We retreat (practice makes perfect), everyone is ok, the smoke is starting to lift in the store and we see two large HVAC units that fell on either side of us. Lesson 4…unprotected steel roof assemblies (metal web bar joists or steel I beams) soften and lose their strength at 900 degrees F, deflect and dropped the HVAC units that would have killed us. We operated our hose line from the door way the rest of the night. Lesson learned, risk a lot to save a lot….the building was a total loss before we even got there. Bill Gustin recommends “intelligent firefighting.”
Scientists tell us we learn best from stories. The US Marine Corps in their basic officer class set aside hundreds of hours for more experienced officers to share stories with up-and-coming officers. Maybe we should make STORY TIME part of our training as well.