Most departments train safely by following the correct policies, procedures and standards. There is not one person who wants to be a party to someone being hurt or even killed during a training exercise. But how many departments train about safety? The answer is not enough.

No doubt, training safely is important. The life of each firefighter is directly linked to training safely, but safety training is also important. By training about safety firefighters learn how to train safely.

What departments already do

How do firefighters train safely? First fire departments appoint someone as the safety officer on scene. This safety officer can be the department's designated safety officer, another training officer or even a company officer. The safety officer obviously should oversee the safety of all department members during the training exercise. He or she should have the authority to stop any and all unsafe acts immediately. The safety officer should appoint assistant safety officers — competent members of the department — to act as his or her eyes and ears all around the training exercise area. Each of these assistant safety officers should have a reliable means of communicating with each other and with the safety officer.

Next departments have a pre-training briefing that supplies each attendee with information about all of the risks involved in the training exercise and how to deal with them. At this briefing, the instructors, safety officer and assistant safety officers should be identified. Each attendee should understand the authority of the safety officer and assistant safety officers. Also, emergency procedures and exit points should be identified. Finally, attendees should walk through the training structure or area so that they are familiar with the layout. Only after this briefing should the training exercise start.

Several standards are designed to protect trainees during live-fire training exercises. The best known of these is NFPA 1403, Live Fire Training Evolutions, which specifies how to conduct live-fire training exercises and how to prepare the structure, and identifies acceptable and unacceptable risks. Following this standard will go a long way toward maintaining safety during training exercises. Also, many states have their own standards to be used during training exercises, and of course every department should have in place its own standard operating procedures to cover the proper way to train safely.

Each exercise should have one main training officer; he or she may appoint assistants, but the training officer should be in charge of the training. The training officer should write a lesson plan to ensure those students learn the training objectives. Each training officer should meet the qualifications of NFPA 1041, Fire Service Instructor Professional Qualifications, or his or her state's equivalent. And as always, a department should have adequate SOPS for the training officer to follow.

Finally, the company officer must follow the proper procedures when participating in the training exercise. Without his or her leadership, firefighters will be at a greater risk. It also is the company officer's responsibility to make sure that subordinate firefighters maintain safe practices not only during training, but also while working at an emergency incident.

What you should do

Unlike efforts that fire departments make to train safely, it's a sure bet that not enough of them conduct safety training. Here are a few steps to introduce safety training to the fire department.

Does the department have a dedicated safety officer? Is that position full-time, or filled by another officer who also has the safety duty? If it's the latter, the fire chief should consider appointing a safety officer. Many department leaders are reluctant to add another officer position, but there much data available to support this move.

Once the position is created, the department should send the new safety officer to learn about his or her position and become certified to NFPA 1521, Fire Department Safety Officer. The steps involved in becoming certified will assist him or her with developing a safety program for your department.

If a department doesn't have a dedicated safety officer, it should at least have a training officer. This officer can lead the department's safety program. He or she should attend the same training and become certified, as well. This puts a lot of responsibility on the training officer. Coming up with a plan is the hardest part of safety programs. Having to teach safety to firefighters who already think they operate as safe as they can is a tough position to be in, but there are many resources available.

However, the company officer is probably the best source of safety training. He or she is with those firefighters and knows them better than most anybody else in the department. Because of this intimate knowledge, he or she will know how to impart the information needed.

Some departments have department-wide training to teach every member safe practices. At this type of training, all members are training at the same time. This is a very big undertaking. It's very difficult to get every firefighter to attend, those who do attend don't always give their undivided attention, and the trainer has a difficult time answering individual questions due to time constraints. Training each shift is a lot easier than trying to train the entire department at once. There are fewer people present, and the trainer is able to put more emphasis on answering specific questions.

Wouldn't most chiefs like to have their firefighters complete eight hours of safety training before the end of summer? Here's a plan. First, have the safety officer should contact the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and request a training kit. He or she then can train each company officer, who can in turn train his or her crew. Train on what? Start with the 16 Life Safety Initiatives, which were developed by leading fire service organizations in conjunction with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation to lower the number of fire service injuries and deaths.

The company officer should spend a half hour each shift discussing a different initiative with his or her crew for the next 16 shifts. After discussing each one, firefighters should list how they can help implement the initiatives. Last but not least, firefighters should train often on their department's SOPS. By identifying which departmental guidelines align with which of the 16 initiatives, firefighters will become more aware of their job and how they can function more safely.

Training safely depends on safety. One will not stand without the other. There isn't one person in the fire service who could begin to train safely if he or she first hadn't trained about safety.

David Ruton sits on the board of the Fire Department Safety Officers Association and is a captain at the Buckeye Lake Village Fire Department in Ohio. A member of the fire service since 1985, he has been a dispatcher with the Licking County (Ohio) 911 Center since 1990 and is certified as an incident safety officer-fire suppression and an emergency medical dispatcher. Ruton holds State of Ohio certifications as a Level II-Professional Firefighter and EMT-B.