Day Drills

[x635 4,066]

I came across something pretty interesting at a FD I was at recently.

 

They have a lot of members who work nights and weekends, or have childcare issues that prevent from attending, So each Wednesday, at 9AM, they drill.

 

Pretty cool solution to make sure training is accessible to everybody. Do any other departments do this?

[BFD1054 1,552]

Seth, my FD rotates drills and truck checks every Sunday (morning) and Monday (evening).

Like many VFD's, we have many members who work shift work. We try to accommodate this by adding weekday drills and truck checks (usually Tuesday or Thursday). It works well for us. Gives everyone a fair chance at keeping fresh on their training and our equipment. 

Edited May 8, 2017 by BFD1054

[AFS1970 504]

We never had much in the way of formal daytime drills, but in my old station if there were a bunch of members around during the day it was not unusual to hold a drill. We got a lot of pushback on that from members who worked during the day and felt that they were being denied the "right" to drill so those of us around in the day should not do drill reports or get any kind of credit for doing that drill. This was also briefly a problem when we were a combination department and there were occasional drills during the day for the career staff and any available volunteers. There was a certain volunteer element that felt these were somehow being used to avoid our weekly nighttime drills.

 

I am a fan of drilling in any way possible and favor a combination of day and night drills, whenever possible. I applaud that department for figuring out a way around the problems their membership was having.

[fdalumnus 165]

Anytime is a good time to train. 

[MiFF 23]

As someone who has a full time job on the nightshift  and every weekend this has always been a problem for me. My department's drills are in the evening with no immediate plans to change that. They'd just rather b**** about the guys that don't make it. Best quote I ever read was from this forum. "For a service that requires 24/7 availability it sucks you have to work Monday through Friday 9-5 to be able to attend any trainings". Even state sponsored trainings in my area follow that schedule.

[dwcfireman 656]

18 hours ago, fdalumnus said:

Anytime is a good time to train. 

 

Train in the morning.  Train in the evening.  Train on a job.  Train until your eyes bleed.  Train until you can do it in your sleep!

 

18 hours ago, MiFF said:

...My department's drills are in the evening with no immediate plans to change that. They'd just rather b**** about the guys that don't make it...

 

As someone who also works shift work, overtime, and occasionally a second job, I can without a doubt add myself to the number of firefighters that find it hard to train harder and take extra classes.  It annoys me to no end that there are people in the fire industry that don't want to change training schedules.  I would love to see another drill session each month for my department, but we can't because someone thinks that it will affect members' LOSAP.  He's right, but it's something that can be changed!  But, why change when you can cry a river?

[MiFF 23]

If there's one thing I've learned in 13 years it's that the fire service is it's own worst enemy and constantly shoots itself in the foot.

[AFS1970 504]

I worked the midnight shift for much of my time volunteering. I actually found it made taking some classes easier. Granted there was a big commitment involved, but I am not sure my working 11-7 then going to class at 8 is any better or worse than a guy who works 9-5 and goes to class at 6. I am also lucky enough to have a very good vacation policy at work where I could take a day at a time or even a half day, as opposed to taking two weeks at a time. This allowed me to attend a lot of good training classes. However it was rough doing a night drill then going into work at 11 tired from drill.