Monday, May 30, 2011

I passed!

I had my assessment for my Bushfire Firefighter course on May 22. All went well, and I'm now qualified to turnout to incidents. However, this is only the start of an ongoing learning process. There's many more courses to attend, as well as gaining experience on the fireground to do.

As for the course itself, the course was interesting. There were both theory and practical components. The theory included some basic fire science, fire behaviour, navigation, communication, means of controlling and extinguishing fires, as well as the various tools and materials used, and of course, basic pump theory and operation. Last, but not least was health and safety, both on the fireground and in general.

The practical side covered most of the above areas, with particular emphasis on draughting water from a static source, and most importantly (the drill we had to get 100% right to pass), the survival procedure to follow when trapped by fire. The practical exercises also covered various firefighting techniques, both using a tanker and water, and hand tools with no water involved.

This past Sunday, our brigade organised some practical training which built on from the course.