ISFSI Takes Look at Education— Both Public Fire Safety and Officer
Public fire education and college programs for developing fire officers were among the subjects discussed at the 16th Spring Conference of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors at Memphis March 19 and 20.
In addition to talks at the general sessions of the conference, the program included 10 workshops, each on a different subject.
Reporting on the progress of the public fire education project the ISFSI is working on under contract with the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, Edward McCormack, ISFSI secretary, said that the courses being developed are heavily aimed at “human behavior, living styles.”
McCormack voiced the belief that the fire service is “very lazy” in informing people how to live safely in homes and what to do when there is a fire. He suggested that “we broaden our horizons” and elevate public fire education—not downgrade fire suppression.
The first course to come out of the project will be an orientation course for the public fire education instructor and McCormack hoped to have this course available in a few months. The second course will be aimed at the level I instructor. McCormack declared that it is necessary to know that an instructor is qualified to teach before he walks into the classnxjm, but he acknowledged that prerequisites are “a big bugaboo” and may not be generally accepted.
Speaking of the value of the project experience to the ISFSI, McCormack commented, “If we shake down as one of the leaders in fire service education, I find nothing wrong with that.”
—staff photos
College role
In discussing the college role in the development of the fire service, dames McSwain, Oklahoma State University Technical Institute instructor, declared that there is no better place for officer development than in college programs. He pointed out that 80 percent of the paid fire departments have access to college courses.
McSwain referred to the technical and educational subjects that officers must he knowledgeable in to meet the NFPA 1021 “Standard for Fire Officer Qualifications” and viewed college study as the way to attain this knowledge. If the fire service will allow colleges to help, he commented, “there’s no doubt fire service objectives could be met more successfully.”
The speaker advised against trying to shift all officer training from local fire department and state programs and recommended integrating the college and other levels of officer education into a total system that will provide the best officer development . But if this is to be done, he added, the fire service must maintain a line of communication with colleges to both influence the content of the college programs and criticize the results—good or bad.
Fire department role
Fire departments also have obligations to emphasize the importance of higher education to their members and to provide incentives for study through money, promotion and other ways, McSwain stated.
Not only must fire departments demand quality in college courses, but the colleges must develop programs that expand fire service training programs—not duplicate them. He viewed tough accreditation standards as a step in this direction and declared that “a college program has to teach people to think.”
In discussing the role of the college instructors, McSwain stated that they must keep in touch with the needs of the fire service and be responsive to changes occurring in the fire service. He said that instructors must be innovative in their work and seek ways of incorporating new concepts in their courses.
Treatment techniques developed during the last few years can prevent 75 percent of the scar tissue formed after severe burns, Pat Goff of the Shriners Burn Institute, Galveston, Texas, disclosed during a talk on caring for child victims of fire. He explained that burn specialists now keep the burned area covered for several months to minimize the reticulation of skin that in the past has disfigured burn victims.
Goff said that not only are burns the second largest cause of deaths of children in this country, but 75 percent of the burns suffered by children can be prevented. He stressed the need to get a burned child to a burn center as quickly as possible as immediate treatment offers the best hope of better ultimate results. While boys and girls are equally likely to become burn victims, he commented, more girls than boys are burned by space heaters.
The keynote speaker, A. Winifred Etter, director of Wynn Etter Associates, Inc., of Cherry Hill, N. J., declared, “A good instructor has to be a catalyst. He has to get people thinking.”
He pointed out that students are seldom more enthusiastic than their instructor and that if a group is not enthusiastic, the problem probably is with the instructor.
Etter remarked that most people think negatively, “so when we teach, we have to get them into a positive mood.’
Truck company work
Stressing the fact that truck company work exists even though a department does not have a ladder company, Ray Simpson, a senior instructor at the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute, told a training evolutions workshop that the small department should train a group to do truck company work.
Anticipating objections that “we are a small department and just cannot have specialists,” Simpson declared that he was not suggesting the development of specialists but just training a number of fire fighters “to a finer edge in truck company work.”
“Forcible entry, ventilation, search and rescue and other truck company work,” the speaker declared, “can be performed more effectively by a specially trained group with a sense of purpose than on a catch-as-can basis by whoever happens to be at hand.’
Evacuation of town
Advice on evacuating a town was given by John A. Taylor, former chief of Smithers, W. Va., and now public service coordinator for Region 1 of that state’s Regional Education Service Agency. From his experience in three mass evacuations, he spoke during a workshop session of the need to use whistles and both stationary and apparatus sirens to awaken the people while fire fighters go from house to house, knocking on every door.
Taylor said that the fire fighters should wear full turnout gear so that sleepy residents would immediately recognize them and not mistake them for an unwanted intruder during the night. When no one responded in a home, fire fighters should question the neighbors to determine whether no one was home or whether an occupant was deaf or incapacitated.
He offered “fire department” as the magic words to attract the attention of sleepy residents and get them to come to the door for instructions. He emphasized that as many men as possible are needed to carry out an evacuation and that police cooperation is a vital part of the operation.
Waverly tragedy
The story of the Waverly, Tenn., LPG tanker blast and fire (see the May issue of Fire Engineering, page 39) was told by Chief Ray Crouch of the Kingston Springs, Tenn., Volunteer Fire Department and District Chief Stan Eller of the Nashville Fire Department, who both participated in the fire fighting. Crouch said that “if any lesson was learned from the Waverly fire, it was the value of mutual aid.” Companies from many miles away responded to Waverly’s call for help.
Eller showed a photo of the derailed LPG tanker that later caused the tragedy as it was lifted off the ground by a crane. There was conjecture that a structural weakness in the tank led to the release of liquid propane and subsequent blast and fire. Eller said that a section of the tank, weighing 19,000 pounds, landed on an auto, cutting the car in two and rupturing a water main in the ground.
Chief Johnny Clayton of New Hope, Ga., who enthralled the ISFSI conference last spring with his story of the airliner crash on the main road in his town, repeated his story to a larger audience. Clayton’s volunteer fire department members pulled 23 persons from the burning DC-9 and 21 of them survived. They extinguished the airliner fire in seven to nine minutes and saved three homes from burning after the crash that killed 85 on the plane and nine residents of New Hope.
The open university program that is being explored by the National Fire Academy came in for criticism from both the volunteer and college instructor sections of the ISFSI. The volunteers questioned the need for the open university program and the college instructors, in criticizing the concept, were dubious about any solution of the accreditation problem.
The Instructor of the Year Award, presented by the Robert J. Brady Company, went to Glenn Boughton, a senior instructor with the University of Kansas Fire Service Extension. He was honored for his development of an innovative fire simulator.
The ISFSI established an attendance record with 852 persons registered. Harold Thompson, first vice president, reported that this was 348 more than at the 1977 spring conference. Furthermore, every state except Hawaii was represented and the largest delegation was from Pennsylvania with 60 members.
