If your department or organization is like mine then you may be looking at a situation that would have scared the crap out of our predecessors. This issue is promotion due to necessity rather than a true representation of experience needed to be successful. From my limited perspective, of the local area surrounding my department, I see many of us forced into finding someone who can check the NFPA standard or certification boxes on the job description whether they have real experience or not. An affectionate term one of our captains has given to these people is “paper firemen.” All certifications and education but no true experience. It is almost a complete 180 from our predecessors who were truly baptized by fire and may not have ever met the standards. While I fully support an educated fire service, as with all things there must be a balance. Just because I have read every book about thermal dynamics and fire strategy / tactics, without experience to back that knowledge, I am effectively blind to the truth.
I shudder to think of someone being an officer (or engineer) without having several (preferably more than you can count with your socks off) true working structure fires under their belt however; being a manager, I know I only have two options in an experienced deprived department. I either can destroy the morale of my people and hire from the outside, or work with what I have.
Since I view turning to the outside, as an organizational or leadership failure to provide for the continuity of the team; I cannot accept defeat due to the lack of call volume. So the question remains: How do you provide necessary experience in a department that lacks the call volume to provide it?
In simplest terms, the only way to supplement (notice I did not say replace) experience is to increase the validity of the training and education. While I did not see a ton of “true working fire” as an Airman in the United States Air Force Fire Protection, I did have the pleasure of attending a world class fire school and multiple monthly training fires. While many will argue that training fires today are too controlled, making them useless in preparing someone for the “real thing,” compared to not having any live fire training it provides better results. All of those training sessions provided more than a little heat to a hose drill. They developed a sense of ease with elevated temperatures, eliminated the primal adrenaline response to fire, removed apprehensions about gear and equipment limitations, educated me on thermal layering, showed me my physical limitations to heat, and provided a controlled environment to practice strategies/tactics. In the absence of the “real thing” providing legitimate training is the best concept.
This concept can be applied to any task we know our people need. Who wouldn’t want to cut up a car for extrication training rather than read a book or worse yet death by powerpoint? What I am trying to point out is that the training has to be as real as possible to have an added value and without that added value, education/training cannot be translated to experience. The smaller or slower your department is, the more you must focus on innovative ways to seek out experience. One note on this methodology, the more “real” the training is the more it can hurt someone if not done properly. Extra caution should be taken to ensure the safety of the training!
Let’s look at a few examples of adding value to what would typically be routine training:
Rather than raising ground ladders at the station or training tower, go into your local area and ask residents if you can raise a ladder to their home in exchange for cleaning their gutters. You’ve just added a new environment to make people aware of hazards, created an opportunity to provide a good community interaction, and had to deal with challenges not typically faced at the training ground (trees, roots, wires, gutters, ect). One ladder thrown in the same spot does not equal the experience of throwing multiple ladders in varying environments. This added value translates to usable experience on the “real thing.”
Do you always go to a vacant parking lot to pull hose lines? Why not go into your local area and randomly ask a citizen if you could pull a hoseline to their front door? You would be surprised how well you will be received when you offer to practice protecting THEIR property. Again, compared to a check the box scenario in a parking lot, this value added training provided learning experience based on hazards, obstructions, distance between the road and doorway, and other limitations due to environment.
When discussing building construction, stop at someone’s house and have the crew evaluate the outside signs indicating interior layout (window size/placement, stair positioning, plumbing vents, ect). Once they make their guess on where the bedrooms and other functional areas are, ask the resident to conduct a free in home inspection. Again, when you show an interest in THEIR property or THEIR lives the training in rarely ever turned down.
In a world that has become safer, we are still the guardians of those who will need us. Being in a slow department can easily lead to complacency which is a fatal mistake. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Rather than seek outside experience to alleviate the coming issue of promoting people without experience, drain every drop of experience out of your training by adding value to it!
Fire Officer Mentor 
Yes! Sending this to our training officer! Thank you!!