May Drill Of The Month: Know Your District and BEYOND!

Knowing your district is VITAL to succesful fireground operations. You may be the best hose stretcher, tactical officer, and firefighter around but if you do not get there all of those skills are for nothing. However knowing your district is not enough, you have to be very familiar with your second, third, and maybe even 4th due!

This is a lesson that has been reinforced to me hard recently, as I have been moved to a part of town I am very unfamiliar with. Sometimes the maps (whether hand drawn, or GIS) is not enough. This (hypothetically of course) could lead to you running a fire in your second due and not knowing 100% were you are going and ending up 2nd due. Sure you still get to do some good fireground work but you should have been on the initial attack line and….well Im rambling and this in no way really happened (lol).

But seriously knowing the roads, buildings, different routes, etc. is very important and sometimes gets very over looked.

So this month dedicate some training time, to driving your district and the surrounding districts, get in the map book, get in your buildings, and take some different routes back to the station to see some streets you may never see. Also no matter how good you know your district always look it up in the map book, or your mapping system it will get you used to using it and will make finding locations easier under the gun.

Be sure to keep following along on twitter @averagejakeff

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

Taking a Break and BOOK GIVEAWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well in a few days I will be headed down to Daytona for the Daytona 500. I turned 30 in January and as a present my wife is sending me to the Gatorade Duels, Truck, Nationwide, and DAYTONA 500!!!

Isn’t my wife a great lady? Well it gets even better! If you read the blog you know I have mentioned several times that my wife recently wrote a book that was published by Fireengineering and the Penwell Corporation.

Well she is GIVING ONE AWAY!!!! Thats right you can win your very own copy of Incident Command for EMS! Here is how

How To Enter

In order to enter you will either need to tweet (@stickysidedwn) or email (sticky-side-down@comcast.net) a picture of what you use for incident command.  It could be a picture of your assignment board, a picture of an Incident Command Vehicle, a picture of a command vest.  Really, anything that shows how you use ICS at your station.

Remember in your e-mail to include your name and station location. We will share pictures that are entered into the contest, as they might give others ideas on what they can do with their station.

Deadline

Pictures will be accepted through 5:00 p.m. March 9th, 2012.

Choosing a Winner

A winner will be chosen at random and their name will be posted Saturday March 10th, 2012

It is just that SIMPLE!!!! So make sure you head over to twitter and follow @stickysidedwn also make sure you tell your friends. Obviously there can only be one winner but if you do not win you can still get your own copy at the Fireengineering Book Store or Amazon.com

Also be sure to head over to www.stickysidedown.wordpress.com for some great content. In addition if you’re heading out to FDIC make sure you look us up and you may even get an autograph in your copy of Incident Command for EMS.

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!