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Trainee Wholetime Firefighter Jess Rintoul

Week 2 - Prevention and inclusion

Week 2 - Prevention and inclusion

Our second week of training started with manual handling and general health and safety. We learnt about what’s on the appliance (appliances are also known as fire trucks or fire tenders) and the process of taking the inventory, routinely done every morning.

We carried out a team building and communication exercise, split into teams. In this exercise we were given a bucket of water and tasked with carrying it on a rescue board, around the drill yard, through appliances and the confined space training facility in the fastest time. It was good to make us aware of how best to communicate and lead with a single voice.

Another key skill learnt this week was how to number off, which is how to parade and make sure we are all present. It felt more like a military method, but it makes sense as when on station we’ll all need to be extremely disciplined to ensure smooth running.

Mid-week we learnt words of command and all about knots and the uses of them. We learnt types such as rolling hitch, bowline and figure eight. We’ve all been tying knots on anything we can find since!

Towards the end of the week we covered equality, diversity and inclusion; a key part of training that we all need to understand and fully integrate into the role due to our constant engagement with the local community. Signing off the week, we had a personal trainer (PT) session where by the end of it our PT, Hong, had us all feeling sick! But we’re all starting to feel fitter already.

Throughout the two weeks a number of people from across the business came to speak to us about the support services available; from groups setup for us to talk about any difficult incidents we attend, through to a Chaplin available 24/7 to speak to.

I’ve really enjoyed this week as it’s started to get more practical and we can take more skills home to practice. I can’t wait to get out on the drill yard and start throwing ladders and hoses; but it’s going to be a shock to us after all this classroom time!