Over the past several weeks, members of the Bowie Volunteer Fire Department and the career staff have been using homes acquired by a local developer to conduct live, hands-on training exercises.

The first class conducted was a truck company operations class. After a classroom session, we moved to the houses to put in practice what was taught. During a morning session, we rotated through various stations where we fine-tuned our skills in ladder placement, forcible entry techniques, search and rescue techniques, and horizontal and vertical ventilation techniques. During the afternoon session, we fine-tuned those skills even more by simulating various scenarios as first and second due ladder companies on simulated box alarms. All participants, volunteer and career, new members to veterans learned something new.
 

The second class conducted was a rapid intervention and fire fighter survival class, which was a three-day class. There was one class for presentation, one for skill development, and one for skill application and practice at the acquired houses. After the classroom presentation, members used station 43 as a training haven for RIT and fire fighter survival techniques. We used various entanglement props, practiced various fire fighter drags using SCBA shoulder and waist straps, utility rope, webbing, and personal rope; and we practiced using search tag lines for locating and extricating downed fire fighters. To complete the RIT/fire fighter survival class, we moved to the acquired houses to apply these skills using a variety of scenarios. The scenarios were based on NIOSH reports of incidents where fire fighters perished. There were a total of 3 RIT scenarios that were conducted, each vastly different from one another, which required us to use the skills learned in the previous sessions. Not only were we able to hone these skills, but we also applied the ICS during each of the three scenarios. A great time was had by all.
 

A special thanks goes out to the staff of Traditions Training for putting on an excellent series of courses. In particular, thanks to Nick Martin, Todd Marshall, Dave Brooks, Tom Wealand, Cliff Stabner, Dan Shaw, Tony Kelleher, and Darryl Martell.