What are some drills you do with/as an explorer?

Topic title says it all Some of the thing we do are
1) race to put on SCBA
2) Crwl around an obsticle course in our SCBA
3) Hose movements

haha, in my dept we have..umm..one explorer, me, lol..were a volly dept but ive done all the same training with firefighters. ive done all of the repelling from windows and bailouts, and scba mazes with smoke, blackout shields..

1)Carry a high rise pack with SCBA up 5 flights of stairs (fun :S)
2)Hose operations. Dragging a hose 100 feet then spraying
3)Scenarios: last one was an MVA with police explorers
4)Dummy drag: 160 pound dummy drag 100 feet back with SCBA
5)Confined space maze (guaranteed to make you go crazy haha)
6)Kaizer sled: 160 pound block of steel to be knocked back 5 feet.
7)Fire evolutions
8)Hose hoist: hoisting a rolled pack of hose up to the fifth floor.

That's what I could think of.

Well I can't wait till next year! Better start working out.

N/A

@hannahan
Do you get to go on calls too? What size of town do you live in? Volunteer or paid?

I am with a paid-on-call FD in a town of about 5,000 about 10 mins away (I live in the country) we just go our first areial last week and we don't get to run calls until we are 18.. even then its sketchy. There is another Department 10 mins away that is all volly, I have called the chief and if I would go there I could run calls with them, they are a town of about maybe 150 in citylimits then a large rural area around it.

I know that the ones in my town get to go on calls to observe. I believe if the scene is safe and it's something like a fire alarm where there is no danger to the junior, they can go into the building to assist.

Obviously the can't go into or work fires, I believe they either stay with the chief or engineer. The have to give up the seat on their truck to a real firefighter if needbe.

This will all vary thru departments and states though.

Jack Anders wrote:@hannahan
Do you get to go on calls too? What size of town do you live in? Volunteer or paid?

My Fire/EMS department is paid but the volunteer rescue squads are just that... volunteer. I get to go with the station that house my house as prt of its first due so if my house is on main street, the station with main street as part of its first due that includes my house, I could ride with. In my case its station 7.My county cover about 244 sq. miles and has 300,000 residents but can double when they come down to watch the Nascar races. We get a good amount of calls in my station. We are not a super busy station but we're busy enough haha. We get calls maybe once an hour or maybe two hours depending on the day and I could go on any call the FF's go on but I can't fight house fires within the IDLH zone sadly lol. I could use the deck gun if they want me to though. I could put out car fires, do medical things (I'm almost done with EMT class so they let me do ome medicla stuff), but can't use the hurst tools (or jaws of life) since we weren't trained. Does that answer your question and any other that you may have? lol

yup I gottcha Thanks, You guys cover a lot of area, in my county we have about 5 volunteer stations, but they are all in diffrent little towns, ours being the largest. All of the stations/ towns are roughly 15 mins away from our station going code 3 at about 65-70 mph We get only about 175ish calls a year, most of which are First Responder which is messed up here because its paid Ambo crews at the Hospital but volunteer responder.

Dang...that's just messed up... We respond to over 38,000 calls a year but we have 20 stations. So you can't go on ANY calls? What if you're there and they leave...you can't go?

38,000....wow we had 93 fire calls last year...haha

The City of Columbus responded to over 2 mil calls last year, while Minerva Park respondd to 700, and Whitehall KY did 140.

@Hannahan, what they say, but with only about 175ish calls thats really rare, although it did happen one time, but the meeting was called off due to the Football team going to the playoffs, 15 min into what would have been the start of the meeting a mutual aid call goes out for a shed fire. The other stations pump AND tanker were broke down. The fire was at our neighbors shed so if theat tells you how close the towns are, also my poperty line is the division of the fire district for two stations and 1 mile north the division for a third :S I am working on getting onto a second station right now that will allow me to go on calls though.

@Anders..... I'm sorry, I didn't understand the part before you talked about the division line. That will be cool. Do they get a lot of calls? The second station? Go to a station with a lot of calls and you'll be a happy person haha, trust me. If I lived on the other side of town, I wouldn't be too happy since the stations are pretty slow there. When you say 175 calls, do you mean thousand or just 175? Do they get more medicals than fire or vice versa? How many engine/pumpers are there in you county? Battalion Chief(s)? District chief(s)?

Well we had a meetin that was canceled so we could go watch our Football team in the playoffs, our meetings start at 7 and a call went out that night at about 7:15, so we missed our chance to go on a call :/. When I say 175 i mean 175 total calls, mostly First Responder calls i believe, we have an ambulance service at the hospital that takes care of other medicals. Manchester is the largest station, so the others get less... but all stations for the most part work together so the stations go together usally. As for trucks since we are extreamly rural, we don't have any engines, our engines are our pumper/tankers. Manchester has two "Engines," 1 areial (first in our county), one tanker, two brush, one rescue. Each station has a FC. Our station has 32 ffs and is paid on call. Sorry for the long post :\

Don't need to say sorry lol. I understand now. Does your department have a website? Your county needs at least one call per station a day haha. So you guys just sit around doing nothing or do you train most of the time? Do you have your own gear?

Alright yeah here is the link: http://www.manchester-ia.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={AEBB9052-C261-4347-9E1A-8756FADE4372}
Um through the winter from about Nov. to I am assuming March we do In-Station work. Anything from truck matneince to harness and rope tying. During the summer when school is out I believe we do 1 SAR drill out in a State park with two other depts, then we will close down a bridge and repell off it! Other then that we just do drills with the dept. Last summer when Iowa got record rainfall the Explorers were called in to help sandbag.. I don't know if you saw onthe news the dam break, if not go to Youtube and type in Delhi Dam Iowa, but we are the town above the dam a little ways. As for gear we get the hammi-downs :/

Does your station have a website too? It sounds like your town is pretty good sized to having 20 stations! Are they Volunteer?

Here, I don't know what we do for explorers. I know we can go on calls and stuff maybe, but I still need to talk to the chief about it. I'm joining next year.

@Davis, I think you have to be 16 for that. In my explorer program, you have to be 16 and complete a 100 question test on people (important people like fire chief, deputy chief, all battalion chiefs for every shift, the three district chiefs (1 on every shift)), and training captains, lieutanants, stations, addresses, captains of each station, truck in each station, tools like hydrant wrenches, SOP stuff. (We have our own protocols you can say. Pretty much things we can and can't do like we could get called from our homes to meet somewhere and go assist with a huge call like a forest fire. We take classes that teach us how to fight forest fires ),etc.

@Anders. It's henricofire.org. To see (sort of outdated, they have new trucks. Only 5 new ones I think) apparatus, click, About us, then stations, then click a station then click on the picture. We're an all paid county with 20 engine, 5 trucks, (I think) 4-6 tankers, 5 brush trucks, 2 battalion chief truck, and one district chief truck or shift commander. The only volly organization are the three volunteer rescue rescue squads in the county. Tuckahoe, Henrico, and Lakeside volunteer rescue squads.

With Columbus we focused on EMS, after our posts Batt. got shut down, because after that only certified firefighters were allowed to ride on the Engine/Ladder/Rescues. All we were allowed to ride was Medic. So we have a few weeks over the summer that we'd do an explorer EMS academy. To be able to ride you had to pass a written version of the NREMT-Paramedics Exam, and the NREMT-Paramedic practical skills.

You have to be a paramedic to ride? On the ambo too? Dang, that's crazy..

I know. I have no clue what the program is like here, it's very new, just...umm..."opened" last year. Like I said, I'll talk to the chief.

our program isnt' really a program youjust hang out and do w.e haha my very first call without any training I ended up on a 2 1/2 inch hose with another person who was pretty new to haha

p.s. the biggest insurance violation ever just sayin

That's not supposed to happen!!! lol

It was sooo much fun though it was better then what we normaly do carrying around extra crap and standing around watching people do work haha p.s. about 4 guys are suppose to be on a 2 1/2 haha not 2 teenagers...lol

At least you did it right haha, didn't you? Were you guys fighting a fire?

yeah a largeee fire haha and yeah we did it right wet stuff on hot stuff we saved the one house it was starting to spread to.

Nice! You guys were in and IDLH environment to be aable tp do that! You're a liability! Lucky!!! hahaha

haha oh dont worry the security oficer was standing right next to us the whole time making sure we didn't get hurt but they really didn't have a choice were a small station it was a huge fire in the middle of the night and mutal aide was ten or 15 minutes away and if we weren't on a hose we might of lose the whole block

Nice!!! That sounded like fun haha.

Haha it was and it was cool cause the house we saved was one of my friends

Boy? That's cool.