Proud to be a Gypsy
26
by Vicki Schmidt
Some of my best friends are Chief Officers in urban, fulltime “round-the-clock” staffed Fire Departments. Another coalition of friends are career firefighters in fully staffed shift-scheduled union Departments. And then there are my firefighter friends and fire instructor colleagues who, like me, rarely see the inside of a fire department crisp with professional uniforms. Our time is spent serving the always on call fire departments that make up over 85% of the fire departments in Maine. Those that are home to the ever on guard; volunteer firefighter.
Quality training for all firefighters, no matter how the Department is defined, is critical. And instructing in a rural volunteer department is especially challenging. Training props and equipment needed to ensure skills based on National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) training standards and certified curriculum objectives are often hard to locate or construct. While some departments have their own in-house instructor; essential skills that ensure continued professional development, full scale Firefighter I & II program management, and the ability to strategically plan for long term department training needs, often escape the ability or means of many volunteer instructors as well as their Departments.
Volunteer departments in every corner of Maine are often served by part time instructors from Maine Fire Training & Education, (MFTE) an educational branch of Southern Maine Community College, (SMCC). MFTE and SMCC also maintain, and upon request and with support from MFTE’s Logistics Division, distribute any of sixteen specialized fire training support trailers to rural regions of Maine. In fact, during the last three months of 2009 and January of this year, MFTE field instructors provided over 15,000 NFPA certified training hours to 593 firefighters in 63 volunteer departments. Many of these classes allowed rural firefighters to obtain their national Firefighter I & II Certification, as well as credit hours towards a Fire Science degree from SMCC and Maine’s Community College System.*
While termed a band of gypsies by some, Maine’s dedicated group of mobile instructors and the equipment they can deliver is vital to many of Maine’s rural and volunteer fire departments. As our States fire training agencies plan for our future fire services training needs, we are wise to look to the lessons learned in States that currently depend on large scale training facilities. Neighboring New Hampshire and a new state-of-the-art facility in Omaha, Nebraska are currently in the process of buying mobile fire training trailers. Maine’s gypsy trailers, and their band of gypsy instructors, might just be the future. And once again, as Maine goes, goes the Nation.
* MFTE FY10 Advisory Delivery Report EMCC Bangor ME
Vicki Schmidt is a State Fire Instructor II, Maine Fire Protection Services Commission, Maine State Federation of Firefighters, Volunteer Firefighters. She is a guest blogger.