The Bernalillo County (N.M.) Fire Department, a combination department of 200-plus firefighters, has developed a tool to bridge the gap between classroom training and the reality of life in the firehouse. This tool, a four-hour course innocuously titled “Firehouse Etiquette,” covers a broad range of topics, all designed to help ensure successful integration of volunteer firefighters into a combination department: expected behavior on and off duty, professionalism, appearance, chain of command, duty time, tips for success, daily operations including interior and exterior truck checks, projects to initiate, details regarding e-mail, forms to complete, physical fitness, radio etiquette, and on-scene expectations.

“The idea actually originated about three years ago with four of our career firefighters who all had started as volunteers,” said Bernalillo County Deputy Chief Mike Jaffa. “They saw that while our new volunteers had been trained really well in firefighting and EMS skills, many were having trouble ‘learning the ropes’ to fit in well in the firehouse and work well alongside career firefighters.

“So these four guys, Lt. Wayne Davis, Lt. Mike Garcia, Bill Henson and Jason Bogue, came up with the idea for ‘Firehouse Etiquette.’ It basically provides new volunteers with a guide to the non-firefighting portion of being a firefighter.”

How did they go about it?

They started out by just sitting down in the station and putting some notes on paper. It took them a good year to get it all down. Then they made their pitch of the concept to me and to the chief of the department; I had volunteers under me that the program could be started with. What they had at the time essentially was … how they thought people — volunteer and career alike — should act when they walk into a fire station. It was a set of handouts that took maybe an hour or an hour-and-a-half to deliver as a lecture. That's where it started, but since then it has sort of morphed into a four-hour class anchored by a PowerPoint presentation. The course gives them an idea what to expect when they go out into the field, how they should expect to be treated, and how other people are going to expect to be treated by them.

And what has been the response?

Actually, I think some of the volunteers are shocked that there is that much to the daily life in the fire station. I also think, however, it gives them a comfort level — they can walk into the station and think, “I know what is expected of me.”

And we not only trained the volunteers with the “Firehouse Etiquette” program, but we went back and trained the command staff, who took it out to the career staff, who implemented it and trained everybody in it, so that everyone has the same expectations. We haven't had the career-volunteer friction that sometimes existed before this class, and I think a large part of that is response to the class. Now everybody knows where everybody else stands. And they treat each other with respect.

What sort of feedback have you received, not only from the firefighters, but the public?

We've received terrific feedback from the firefighters. Everyone inside the department now has seen it work, and the message we get is, “Keep doing it.” And we constantly get suggestions from firefighters who say, “Here's something I think you should consider adding.” And when we feel it is appropriate, we do.

From the public's perspective — when they see us on a call performing our day-to-day duties — now there's really no way for them to tell who is career and who is volunteer. We walk the same, we talk the same, we dress the same, and we now interact the same. With this etiquette program, people in the community we serve can't tell the difference. They don't know who's paid and who's not.

It obviously works with your department. How about other departments? Are they contacting you, wanting copies of the program?

Yes, they are. Since we began the program, there are probably 10 or 15 departments besides ours that have implemented a version tailored to their own stations. We get calls for a CD of the presentation or information on the program every few weeks. And we delivered it as a presentation at the last Fire-Rescue International conference to probably about 120 different departments. I know before we went I burned about 125 or 150 CDs of the PowerPoint presentation, and they were gone before we were done talking. [Ed.: The PowerPoint presentation can be found at www.swd-iafc.org/resources.htm.] And we're looking at doing another presentation of the program at the Volunteer and Combination Officer Section of the IAFC symposium this year in November.