Truck Company Operations: A Hundred Things To Do

In his Big Room Session at FDIC 2010, Lieutenant Mike Ciampo of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) enumerated the many fireground tasks that the truck company must accomplish to successfully mitigate an incident.

“For many of us we’re so engrained into book knowledge and teachings that we often don’t get exposed to outside training or other materials,” Ciampo said. “We need to look beyond textbook learning and teaching and show the street smart skills that good truck company firefighters acquire through experience and use of their tools.”

“If you watch a carpenter put in hardwood floors and he gets to a tricky corner, he flips the wood over, draws lines on it at the corner section and goes and cuts it. This isn’t a trick of the trade; it’s the actual trade and knowledge of having to deal with every day adversities while working,” Ciampo continued. “This class is not meant to just show you tricks, it’s meant to expose you in the how-to, to teach others or yourself other methods of tactics and tips to fall back on when you are dealt a bad hand.”

“Since we call this the instructors conference, all the truck instructors should be able to bring back tactics and tips to their respective department to increase overall skill level and knowledge to their truck companies,” Ciampo said.

Ciampo is a regular columnist for Fire Engineering, writing the “One Fire” column on the back page. He is a regular instructor at FDIC and appears in Fire Engineering Training Minutes videos on truck company operations.

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