Firefighters may consider some training tedious or not very impactful — just something to get that check mark. But there is a new dynamic in fire fighting and this may mean that dynamic changes are needed in their training evolutions to keep pace with the demands of a call in today’s environments. Think about other skills we practice regularly for proficiency and speed – donning doffing, SCBA, catching the hydrant, establishing water supplies, setting up aerial ladder, laddering the building, patient assessment, etc. We all drill on these skills regularly so that we can have a tactical high-performance outcome needed during a call. Why not embrace the high-performance mindset and apply it to all your training?
Shifting your training to be tactical can really impact your team performance by being able to make dynamic shifts in methods during operations focused on outcomes based on what is presented. One definition of tactical is “actions taken to achieve immediate objectives, such as securing a position or neutralizing an enemy.” We all know that the fire will kill you, it is the reality of our work, but there are many things in our work that put us at significant risk. Studies have shown that in Mayday situations, roughly 45 per cent are resolved by self-rescue. The steps that firefighters take to get ourselves out of bad situations should be things that we practice often. A captain at a busy hall in a large municipality explained to me that proficiency with your gear is critical, knowing how to do everything with your SCBA with gloved hands by feel. Blacked out is important because this is what you will need to be able to do if anything happens when you are in a hostile environment. “There is no difference between 60 feet under water with no air and being in a burning room with no air…there is not air…end of story,” a rescue captain with the London, Ont., free department shared with me.
This mastery of our most important tools helps reduce stress during equipment malfunctions, and will influence reactions such as breathing rate, heart rate, and air consumption. Similar to other high-performance teams like military or sports, practicing as a group to develop proficiency as a team is critical to being able to react in high stress situations. Every skill is perishable, and we need to consider that we should be doing something every shift to maintain all of our skills. Tactical decision making will help your firefighters be able to adapt to the situation and have the ability to rapidly consider solutions and implement them because it is what is done in all your training. Work with your team on varying situations so each member is putting a different spin on the scenario you face. This will provide high-performance evolutions that consider best outcomes for and improve skill recall and proficiency.
Tactical thinking is a good fit for many of our emergency situations as our enemy can be fire, time, structural integrity, or many other things. The How often do we train on different tactics based on varying conditions or scenarios within a single session? Is the crew challenged by having each member take a turn to change the situation for the scenario in some way for the next rotation, and to allow for the size up to be done with enough of a change that it may change tactics or priorities? Frequently, crews practice the same scenario several times with little to no difference so by the fourth evolution it may be that crew members miss steps or not do the full skill, they just get to the end outcome. Using each evolution as an opportunity to add another level, a different perspective or challenge, can be a great way to reset the whole crew in the scenario while also support everyone evaluating the situation again because of the new information/ situation. Here is an example: the first scenario is a family member trapped in a basement for a daytime fire event. The second scenario is them trapped on a second-floor bedroom with a basement fire in the evening. The third scenario is a grandparent stuck in the upstairs bathroom at night with the fire on the main floor. The last scenario is the fire in a bedroom at 3:00 a.m. and the family is stuck on a verandah/balcony on the second floor. The problems on a high level are the same but the methods to control the situation may change; the tactical priorities will shift. So many things can change our perception and thus tactics: smoke showing, people in the driveway, family members or neighbours frantically yelling and trying to get our attention as we arrive. We share the information with incoming units and their thinking shifts to adapt to the new information. These factors can be mimicked in training to help build the resiliency and proficiency to function under pressure. Other crew members can be the actors so that the realistic portrayal of this type of call and the emotional stressors are present.
Tactical training involves performance-based drills that are used to develop skills, support collaboration on tactics, and improve all crew members in being able to process information and evaluate the critical factors of the event and make tactical changes based on the information they have. Practicing scenarios with urgency in them helps firefighters develop proficiency in managing the cognitive impacts of the emotional stress response. Elevated cortisol levels impact our critical thinking and decision-making skills; this is something we all know. We can’t fully eliminate it, but we can practice with scenarios that add pressure so that everyone learns methods to manage it. It also hones critical decision making as an officer when you are under stress, managing your people and the scene, and deciding what your tactical priorities are. Things such as time of day, water supply, fire location, fire conditions and the weather are all essential considerations that provide some challenges that help you apply critical thinking and adapt your thinking to a new solution. As you use this training more often you may introduce a time factor to the mix. The goal is to focus on core principals and develop critical thinking skills when you are under pressure and mental toughness to function and manage stress during decision-making through scenarios that are possible/likely situations in your community. If you want to add more reality to your scenario, bring in things like traffic sounds, pumps running, multiple vehicles with lights and strobes. You want their high-performance to feel smooth. Make one decision at a time, deal with what you know, anticipate what may come next.
There are some great resources that can be used to help you plan tactical training. There are many examples on YouTube that can help stage something that can be done in the station – show the first arriving unit fire videos on the TV and have the command use that video to provide direction to crews. Maybe command is sitting in their truck on the apron of the fire hall while watching a video on a tablet or cell phone to provide directions to everyone based on what tactics they are feel are needed. Crew members are in gear and ready to deploy from the apparatus grabbing hose lines or equipment to do tasks that they have been assigned. Maybe there is a tarp over the command vehicle, so they can see nothing, like a nighttime event. There is action, there is critical thinking and muscle memory. Each evolution can involve a different challenge that changes the response – time of day, weather, people, fire or smoke. Perhaps you sometime use drill sheets that have been prepared as part of your training program, or ones from a course someone has just taken, or a call you just heard about from the other shift. All of the scenarios need to have something that creates urgency and tactical thinking. It will be done as rapid evolutions so that it has impact and is in a manageable time frame. Train every shift on maintaining skills, communication, readiness and group dynamics. Do you have a new person on the crew today? A call-in? Perfect, even more reason to train and have your team work together to function as a team.
As with any training the goals we hope to achieve is critical thinking to manage the problem we face. Core competencies are important, they are the foundation to all that we do so practicing those continuously is also important. Many resources from Rescue1, International Society of Fire Service Instructors (ISFSI), NFPA, Fire Service Research Institute (FRSI) and many more are found online and will provide some ideas for different ways to train with your firefighters. They are all going to be good lessons, even if the outcome did not go the way that they anticipated. Firefighters have learned something new to add to their toolbox. The dynamic of the successful team performance, where all team members have developed the tactical thinking and priorities that lend an understanding of what information to advise your incident commander of, what they need to know for their tactical priorities, and for managing their high performance teams to a positive outcome. Practice develops proficiency, competency and supports critical thinking in the changing environments that firefighters often face. At the end of the day, all training has the goal of successful outcomes based on defined or pre-set criteria. Applying skills in a variety of environments, circumstances, or situations helps build competency, resiliency and tactical proficiency. The outcomes should be positive and re-enforce a sense of success and achievement: you rocked that drill, you had the best time or the solution your crew used was dynamic, effective and smooth. We are all tactical warriors on the fireground, it is our job to develop solutions for the problem. Life safety is always our top goal. Practice often to achieve the creation of a tactical high-performance team.
