Lt. Peter B. Lund
Another year goes by without our great friend and mentor Lt. Peter Lund. We at Traditions Training miss our co-founder each and everyday. His wisdom, experience and humor made learning from and teaching with Pete a great experience for all firefighters, fire officers and fellow instructors. He could easily relate to the youngest probie and the tenured veteran all at the same time. All would come away from class further educated and ‘combat ready’ for the next incident. In order to continue to pass along his message, we pay homage to him in all the classes that we teach. It…
ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A 5th GRADER?
By Larry Schultz I will start of with a brief recap of my last blog. I began with a contemplative question that challenged the value of our thoughts and trends, as they relate to risk assessment on the fireground. I opined, that we might be defaulting to a “risk avoidance” strategy because we were falling to acknowledge the other causes that make firegrounds go bad. I then suggested that the fire service as a whole has done a poor job of offering a subjective and systematic way of assessing risk on the fireground. In every class I teach, I ask…
WHERE ARE THEY?
There are many facets of accountability on the fireground today. One of which is the tags, rings or passports that tell incident commanders which personnel are riding each apparatus on the scene. Another major one concerns personal accountability, where the company officer has a duty and responsibility to ensure that their crew stays together and follows all policy and procedures on the fireground. A third layer, and the focus of this article is the accountability tracking of companies and personnel by the use of a tactical worksheet or command board. In watching many websites, and perusing YouTube for fire videos,…
OLD WORDS, NEW LESSONS
OLD WORDS, NEW LESSONS- There are literally hundreds of thousands of trade magazines and books pertaining to the fire service. Some more relevant than others. Sometimes, our greatest lessons can come from articles that were written decades ago. The trick is to find these golden treasures. Over the past several years, I have been fortunate to have been given a number of these age old publications. As I’ve skimmed through nearly all of them, I can’t help but notice that they have GREAT articles about basic firefighting skills. Something that I believe has been lost or poorly upheld in this…
LIFE “LINE”
LIFE “LINE”- Everyone has different “pipes” aka nozzles on their apparatus. But, they all have one thing in common. All of them distribute some type of extinguishing agent (usually water) to suppress fire. How often do you check these appliances to assure they are FULLY functional? One malfunction, due to complacency could end-up a fatal or near fatal mistake. In a lot of departments, it is EVERYONE’S responsibility to make sure the nozzles are “combat ready” at all times. Every time a new driver assumes his/her role they get checked. Every time a “backstep” or “bucket” person assumes their position…
Join Our Mailing List
Training Programs
TT instructors deliver some of the most intense and informative training with an unparalleled passion for the fire service. Our classes are based on on-the-job experience and consist only of "no BS" fireground proven tips & skills.
Classes are fully customized and are available on all operational fire service issues, including:
- Engine/Truck Company
- Rapid Intervention / FF Survival
- Officer Development
- Strategy & Tactics
Please click here to learn more about our classes, or contact us.
What People Are Saying About Us
-
Automatic Fire Alarm Complacency By: Tony Kelleher and Ricky Riley Recently, we have had several discussions; both within my own areas fire department and in other departments across the country with regard to their policy and attitudes towards automatic fire alarms. While we at Traditions Training continue to preach our Combat Ready attitude to firefighters and officers, the topic of automatic fire alarms continues to creep into the conversation. The focus, mainly on the attitude that firefighters and their respective departments take on these type of alarms. While we fully understand the consistent physical and mental drain on personnel and…
-
While I was watching the show Surviving the Cut the other night that highlighted the rigors of the training that the Nightstalkers (160th Special Aviation Regiment) go through, I had an epiphany, or at least I drew a corollary principle for what we should learn from this training in the fire service. The show portrayed the completion of a hellish, multiple-hours long training session that spanned from mental and physically demanding tasks to ultimate culmination in a nighttime march in full gear. The stress and rigors of their training would be our snot-slinging working fire that demands every ounce of…
-
“As equally as important as the tool box that you have helped us expand and tweak, is the attitude and passion that you guys brought to the class. Your enthusiasm and passion for the job is contagious and puts Traditions Training in the top notch category.”
-
“as I sat and looked around the room and didn’t notice any one staring around and zoning out during the whole class. I thought that was great you guys had the attention of every single student 100% witch is hard to do. As a new fire instructor a goal of mine is to delivery a program in the same manner someday.”
-
“I wanted to drop you a line and let you know how much I appreciated yet another top notch class with Traditions Training. The messages that TT delivers are so real-world, well balanced, and spot-on, it’s honestly a treat when combined with such engaging instructional styles.”
-
“Awesome class, everything I wanted to accomplish as a Training Officer for our company this weekend was done so and then some. Our guys have learned efficiency and how to do more in smaller numbers over the past two training classes. It was great working with you guys again.”
-
“Its erie how well the fire fit into what we went over throughtout the weekend, front storm door, steps on the side deck, a few turns to get into the living room, etc… but none of it caused any issues at all with the hoseload and the weekend still fresh in our mind.”
-
“With only three fire fighters we had the main fire knocked before second engine got there. Last night we had changed all of our hose loads over to mostly minute man and it worked great for us”