REIGNITING RESPONSE

An Update From Lsfm

By: Ashley Rodrigue, State Fire Marshal’s Office Public Affairs Director

A lot of things changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic—for the good and the bad. One thing that was affected in both ways, in all types of industries, was training.

For some business sectors, there was an easy pivot to virtual training and meeting which, for them, was a positive. In fact, many have converted to this type of meeting and training permanently. But for the types of industries represented by the membership of this organization, the effect on training has been detrimental. There were fewer in-person trainings offered and fewer seats available when they were offered. Then there were retirements and COVIDrelated circumstances that gutted the depth and institutional knowledge so many companies relied on, especially in a crisis.

Training creates muscle memory in both the traditional muscle sense and in a brain function sense as it pertains to developing motor skills through repetition. Without the repetition that training offers, those “second nature” motor skills fade, increasing risk.

This is especially true for industry response teams. Many facilities lost both quantity and quality in their response teams and rebuilding those has not been a priority. It’s time that changes. It’s not only important for the safety of your employees and your response team but for the integrity of your safety and standards requirements records with regulatory agencies including but not limited to OSHA, EPA and NFPA. Don’t forget about medical training too!

While this gap in training for industry did not necessarily lead to missing advancements in equipment, technology and/or techniques, it has prevented keeping up with new experiences and occurrences that are learned in training through “war stories” of the instructor, but also networking of the attendees.

According to our industry training instructors at the Louisiana Fire and Emergency Training Academy (FETA), industrial facilities should be RIGHT NOW assessing what your response team looks like today and what they’re capable of. This should include having an accounting of the certifications each member of the team has and what certifications are needed for potential new members. After completing that assessment, start looking for available training in fire/hazmat, medical, confined space rescue, and rope rescue courses, at minimum, and get your team members signed up. And schedule as early as possible since training is in high demand across the board due to the 3-year-gap in training due the pandemic.

For your knowledge, FETA offers a variety of these types of courses, namely, a 40-hour Hazmat Tech, a 3-day Industrial Fire School for new hires, NFPA 1081 and a week-long Industrial Standard for Fire Training course. From the medical front, FETA also offers First Aid & CPR and Emergency Medical Responder (EMR).

We hope this is “old news” to your industries and you are already ahead of the curve on rebuilding your response teams. But if not, we hope this reminder helps you get your workplace on track with returning to its strongest state of safety!

Thank you for choosing to be appropriately informed, sharing this information with others, and advocating for safety with us!