From the Publishers Desk

From the Publishers Desk

departments

FDIC to Meet for Fiftieth Time

If you haven’t done it already, it’s about time you did. We are talking here about necessary leave arrangements and hotel and travel reservations for the 50th annual Fire Department Instructors Conference which will be held, as usual, in Memphis on March 21-24.

The FDIC, as its programs have always demonstrated, was instituted solely for fire department training. And it has held to this purpose. At the first conference (Chicago 1928) most attention was given to basics—the teaching and standardizing of the “hands-on” skills. Attendance totaled eight. All instructors were supplied by Midwestern rating bureaus. In contrast, this year’s conference is expected to draw over 3000 fire fighters and instructors.

Initially there was some fire service skepticism about the FDIC because it was dominated by the insurance industry and its instructors. But the years proved the conference’s worth. Eventually, the instructors, conference speakers and the conference itself were eventually and almost inclusively taken over by fire service people.

So it is not surprising that this year the conference sponsorship will be jointly shared by the Insurance Services Office and the International Society of Fire Service Instructors. And from what we hear, the ISFSI will eventually take complete control, which is as it should be. This society, which has grown tremendously in the past six years, numbers some 1500 members, almost all of them from the uniformed service, and all instructors in fire service training.

By now, of course, the FDIC no longer concentrates on the basics. The presentations range from management principles to the emergency medical service and other highly sophisticated subjects.

But this is not all that the FDIC offers. A secondary, but still important benefit comes from the ability of fire fighters and instructors from all parte of this country and many parte of the world to meet and swap ideas for the benefit of all.

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