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2016 Annual Report • Fire Department • St. Anthony Village, Minnesota <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />20 | Page <br /> <br />vehicles and the overwhelming effect pumping can have on people when they first get started. <br />If you ever get time to tour the station, take a minute to stand in front of a pump panel and <br />gather in all the things in front of you, now imagine trying to do that while a house, business or <br />apartment complex is burning and people are watching and expecting you to know exactly <br />what to do as quickly as possible. This is why we train on many of things we train on and we <br />continuously train on it over and over again and again. <br />Firefighter I and II training has a lot of things that can be extremely fun to learn and has a lot of <br />areas that can be really boring to learn, but part of being a firefighter doesn’t always get to be <br />fun and games. Each thing that we teach has a reason behind it. The training starts out with a <br />basic history of the fire service in general, we then move up to qualifications and safety along <br />with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and communications. Then start to get into the <br />science behind some of the fire service like fire behavior. One must know the science aspect of <br />fire in order to know how to properly fight it; fire is made up of four essential components, fuel, <br />oxygen, heat and a chemical reaction. If you remove anyone of the four things fire can no longer <br />sustain itself and can no longer burn therefore you put the fire out. Another part as stated a <br />little earlier is all of the tools and equipment associated with the fire department. This can <br />include the correct use of a tool to the correct name a tool is called. Seems like a lot of <br />information but it doesn’t end there, moving on to building construction, again why would a <br />firefighter want to know about building construction. As a firefighter if you do not have a basic <br />knowledge of how buildings are put together then you will not be able to judge and determine <br />how a fire may burn or move through that building. They have all kinds of Incident Command <br />System (ICS) and scene size up training, these are two vital parts of the fire service because not <br />only does the scene size up paint a picture for other responding firefighters but it lets everyone <br />know what to expect and plan on their way to a call. The ICS not only controls a fire scene but it <br />keeps everyone safe and accountable so that we all go home at the end of the day. We then start <br />getting into some more of the hands on training and specialized training that tends to be the <br />more fun areas like ladders, forcible entry, ropes and knots, ventilation, fire attack, foam <br />operations and search and rescue. At this point we are nearly half way through most of the <br />training. We also continue with water supply, firefighter survival and rehab, salvage and <br />overhaul, fire suppression and emergency medical care.