2021 Bridgeport, WV, Fire Expo

Lecture: Athletes, Military and Law Enforcement have been using Reality Based Training to train the body and mind for performance for decades. The fire service is catching up by utilizing a step-by-step methodology to achieve peak performance during calls and interacting with fellow members.  The methods shared are compiled by years of research from sport psychology, military and law enforcement.  This open and honest lecture provides the attendees with our model in conducting Reality Based Training from the basic recruit to the Incident Commander. We will discuss the “flow state” and how that will help firefighter dominate the fireground.

2-Day H.O.T: Students are faced with many challenges within a believable “story line” that mimics as closely and as safely as possible a Mayday event with floor collapse. The objective is to have students leave the training ground with confidence and an understanding of what it takes mentally and physically to stay alive and never give up. Participants are taken through a rapid progression of skill stations: forcible entry, wire entanglement and drywall breach. They then partner up and become part of a crew that responds a short distance into the training ground with an instructor, force entry with a prop, and are led by their instructor into the house where the scripted evolution begins. The student is alone with all the stressors of that event: entanglement, falling debris, low profile obstacles, smoke detectors emitting, low-air alarms, and the impending doom of not making it out alive. However, the student will have all the skills necessary to complete the task and will have Exercise Controllers along the way—individuals trained in mental rehearsal, goal setting, positive self-talk, and arousal control. The Exercise Controller ensures safety while maintaining realism. The student never fails the course unless an unsafe act is about to occur.

20 Students MAX

2-Day Hands on Training: Short staffed, combination and volunteer departments expect their members to do multiple functions on the fire ground. This program combines “The Big Four”: stretching the first attack line, forcible entry, quick mask and primary search. These are the most important task the 1st arriving companies need to perform flawlessly. This course will help the attendee develop the skills needed to accomplish these tasks. The instructors will manipulate the environment with emotional responses to challenge the firefighter tempo. The progressive reality-based training style will instill confidence operating as a 1st and 2nd in company with the staffing levels of that department. The High-Level scenario will bring all the tasked practiced together in a fast based, realistic story line. Vent Enter Search will be added using an acquired structure.

Special breakout session on Day 2: Tactical 360-Enhancing Fireground Strategies & Tactics with Special Guest Andy Starnes and Company.

40 Students MAX

Firefighters are well aware of the value of a 360-degree size-up on the fire ground. Numerous LODD’s cite the failure to a 360-degree size-up as one of the consistent contributing factors to these firefighter deaths. In addition to this, the lack of a 360-degree size-up, missed cues, and critical fire ground factors on a size-up often contribute to the loss of the structure during the incident. With only seconds to assess a building and develop an incident action plan, firefighters must be more educated, highly trained, and possess more building construction & fire behavior knowledge than ever before. By incorporating thermal data into the firefighter’s size-up they are able to identify the fire’s location, determine the fire’s level of severity, predict the fire’s direction of spread, and identify hidden fire spread that was not previously possible with traditional methods. Participants will learn the key attributes of thermal imaging in a fire behavior demonstration conducted with the Max Fire Box and then conduct a Tactical 360 on an acquired structure where they will apply the concepts they learned.