If you use the IPSDI Exposure Tracker™ app, you already understand the importance of documentation. Logging an exposure may seem small or unglamorous, but it's making a record. That value shows up later, when memory isn't enough and you need to have it in black and white. That's the principle behind the report we're sharing.
You already know what your training program needs. The hard part has always been proving it. That’s where this report can help.
More than 1,300 active firefighters across the United States and Canada answered FireRescue1's fifth annual What Firefighters Want survey, and this year the subject was training.
What came back is something most of us already feel. Now it's quantified. In the past five years, nine out of ten respondents earned at least one certification. When asked why they train on their own time, the overwhelming response spoke volumes: they want to get better at the job.
The system around that drive is where it breaks down. Scheduling conflicts or lack of time is cited as the primary barrier. Staffing or call coverage ranks second, followed by a lack of dedicated training facilities and props. And when the drill ends, just over one in three use objective, skill-based evaluation to find out whether anybody actually got better. Those barriers are structural, not motivational.
We know firefighters don’t need a pep talk. And now we can show, in numbers, what they do need: time, staffing, and a place to train.
This report is more than an interesting read; it’s a tool. Every training officer and chief in this country has stood in front of a budget committee or a council and tried to explain a problem they can feel in their gut. The crew is stretched thin. The drill gets interrupted multiple times. There is no burn building within an hour's drive. It is difficult to fund a feeling. It is much easier to fund a number, and this report is full of them.
Bring it to your next funding request. Take it to your staffing conversation, your capital facilities ask, your case for a training officer position. You’re no longer asking the committee for what they may see as a one-off request. You are now describing a national condition, with an industry report behind you, identifying the barriers you are asking for help to mitigate.
The report is free. FireRescue1 asks for an email address to download it. Download the full report.
Inside the report:
"Training, Readiness and the Gap Between Them" — Chief John Oates, former chief of the East Hartford (Connecticut) Fire Department, asks the harder question behind the data: are you training on the right things?
"Training Barriers: What's Getting in the Way?" — Deputy Chief Vince Bettinazzi, Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Fire Department, on time, staffing, funding, and the interruptions that leave evolutions half-finished.
"The AI and VR Training Gap" — Battalion Chief Scott Roseberry (Garland, Texas Fire Department, and chairperson of the International Association of Fire Chiefs Technology Council), Bluewater, Ontario firefighter Justin Brunner of Decisolve and Evan Sitler-Bates of XpertVR on the challenges and hesitations around implementing artificial intelligence or virtual reality in training, and what has actually changed over the past decade.
Our thanks to the team behind the report: Editor-in-Chief Janelle Foskett and the FireRescue1 and Lexipol staff, sponsor FirstNet Built with AT&T, partners the International Association of Fire Chiefs and the International Public Safety Data Institute, a nonprofit fire service data science and research organization, and project advisors Chief John Oates and Chief Jason Caughey.
And to the 1,300 firefighters who took the time, thank you. Every figure in this report started as one of you telling the fire service the truth about your training.
We're sharing this with our Exposure Tracker users and the wider fire service because the same idea applies to training: Documentation supports action. What you record in the app is yours. This report belongs to everyone. Read it, share it with your crew, and put it to work.
Read the complete What Firefighters Want series.