Did you self-study for FFI?

[SWLAFireDawg]

I was wondering if anybody else did self-study for their firefighter one certification instead of attending an academy. If so, how long did it take and do you wish you could have gone to an academy? Did it leave gaps in your knowledge base?

[mattc05]

I know people that did but heard it was hard. I am not sure how you could read and understand SCBA basics without throwing a pack on?

[BKDRAFT]

I didn't even know they offered such a thing. There is no way you could be as proficient as someone going to an actual academy.

[BKDRAFT]

I didn't even know they offered such a thing. There is no way you could be as proficient as someone going to an actual academy.

[Slaytallica45]

Here in NJ atleast I believe its not possible to do FFI "by yourself", simply because how would you complete the practical evolutions required by the state?

[SWLAFireDawg]

I guess I should clarify. I have access to all equipment needed, and have background with the PPE, SCBA, Fire Behavior, Ropes and Knots, and Hose sections from an industrial fire brigade. The parts I am new to are the Rescue and Extrication, Ventiilation, Ladders, Fire streams for structural firefighting, Fire control in structural, Forcible entry, andbuilding construction.

LSU instructors come to the parish (county) at different times of the year for certification purposes, its not like its a correspondence class. We still have to take the same state test as someone in an academy, and be as proficient in the practicals. The difference is that we set our own pace and don't have to wake up every day in fear of getting tossed from an academy for whatever reason. I work full time plus some, and volunteer with the dept, so 10 weeks at an acadmy just is not an option for me.

[jerry4184]

In PA, where I'm at, we "self studied". Basically, you have to have essentials done in Pa to take FFI anyway. So must of the classroom work for FFI, is covered in the state approved essentials class. We just worked with experienced firefighters up here, some state instructors, some FFI approved instructors, and the like, without a formal class. One department up here just worked on the stuff as part of their weekly drills.

[SWLAFireDawg]

We are also required to go through an NFPA 1403 class and certification before we can actively participate in a volunteer dept now also. That gets you the very basics of the essentials, and gets you some practical exercises in as well.

I was just curious who all has gone this route.

[BKDRAFT]

People do need to get themselves up early to be at the academy. Running, pushups, doing PT. Having drill instructors yelling in your face. This is how you learn responsibility, self discipline, and respect to name a few. Commradere, and teamwork are two other large ones. Get into a real fire academy guys. Don't do it half ass so you can get the certification. Believe me your skills will show it when your hired and you must pass a post employment rookie school. Is that when you want to see how a "real" academy works? I sure don't reccomend it.

[SWLAFireDawg]

People do need to get themselves up early to be at the academy. Running, pushups, doing PT. Having drill instructors yelling in your face. This is how you learn responsibility, self discipline, and respect to name a few. Commradere, and teamwork are two other large ones. Get into a real fire academy guys. Don't do it half ass so you can get the certification. Believe me your skills will show it when your hired and you must pass a post employment rookie school. Is that when you want to see how a "real" academy works? I sure don't reccomend it.

Good points.......but keep in mind......not everyone does it full time or for a paycheck. And we can't quit our bread and butter jobs to go to a real acadey so we can volunteer in our off time, so we are given no choice but to "half-ass" it.

An academy isn't the only place where responsibilty, self-discipline, and respect can be obtained. Some of us are lucky enough to have been raised with those attributes from a very early age.

I can definitely see benefits in going to a full academy for individuals desiring a paid career in fire services though.

[Bones42]

I can definitely see benefits in going to a full academy for individuals desiring a paid career in fire services though. Just remember, a good number of career fire departments will send you through their own academy once you are hired, regardless of whatever academy you went to before.

Firefighting is a team effort. You should learn in a "team" environment.

[Dalmatian190]

so we are given no choice but to "half-ass" it.

Both you & BK need to be biffed over that one. Half ass is an attitude, and has nothing to do with how your training is provided.

The full time programs certainly have advantages, but they're not practical for very large parts of the country covered by volunteer departments. Many VFDs use the FF I certification to demonstrate their volunteers have been properly trained under OSHA or other state requirements.

I don't know how Louisana organizes their programs.

In Connecticut, such "self-study" would not be possible. The FF I programs you attend to be eligible to sit for the written and take the practical portions of the state certification test must include hands-on training, including a live burn. And the live burn is proctored (monitored) by instructors from the State.

Most of the FF I stuff is skills, and those you learn from being shown.

[jerry4184]

It's the same in PA, only, for FFI, you don't actually have to attend a FFI class per se. The essentials course, as it is now, covers your structural burn, and all required areas of the FFI program. Essentials isn't technically required to take FFI, but it is to take a state approved burn class, and without a state burn certificate, no FFI for you.

[SWLAFireDawg]

[QUOTE=Dalmatian190;758447] so we are given no choice but to "half-ass" it.

Both you & BK need to be biffed over that one. Half ass is an attitude, and has nothing to do with how your training is provided.

QUOTE]

Thank you....I am aware of that. It was a remark intended to be somewhat sarcastic. I took his comment to mean that we were "half-assing" our training by not choosing to attend an academy. Perhaps it was taken the wrong way.

Either way....it is what it is.

[WaterbryVTfire]

I'm a little confused. I took FF 1 and currently in FF2. Neither seem to be an independant study course. Due to the fact there are homework assignments and hands on drills. Do states have seperate FF1 & 2 other than the IFSTA/ProBoard cert?

[SWLAFireDawg]

I,m not sure how they do it elsewhere, but if I go to our local emergency training center on the night an LSU instructor is there doing certifications and I can pass them.....I get certified. It is done in a written and a practicals.

I'll find out a little more next month. We were supposed to have an actual class with the dept, but it isn't coming together. So the chief said if I could study on my own, and pick up the practicals as I go, and pass certification, he had no issues with it.

[GFD156]

I'm a little confused. I took FF 1 and currently in FF2. Neither seem to be an independant study course. Due to the fact there are homework assignments and hands on drills. Do states have seperate FF1 & 2 other than the IFSTA/ProBoard cert?

I don't believe that all states follow the same program; CT sounds like VT, we are meet the requirements for both IFSTA and Proboard certification after FF1/FF2 as the CT training meets those standards....

[BKDRAFT]

[QUOTE=Dalmatian190;758447] so we are given no choice but to "half-ass" it.

Both you & BK need to be biffed over that one. Half ass is an attitude, and has nothing to do with how your training is provided.

QUOTE]

Thank you....I am aware of that. It was a remark intended to be somewhat sarcastic. I took his comment to mean that we were "half-assing" our training by not choosing to attend an academy. Perhaps it was taken the wrong way.

Either way....it is what it is.

No it wasn't taken the wrong way. Sounds like you understand you are half assing it doing a FF1 self study, and that's all I was saying. :)

[BKDRAFT]

By the way don't use some excuse that your just a vollie and you don't have the time because you have another job.

I was a Reserve FF for three years before I was hired as a professional fireman. During that time I worked a 60+ hour work week on a busy ambulance in a large city, and went to a fire academy. It can be done.

Like someone said above, half-assing it is an attitude. You know deep down you can go to an academy but it will be more intense and harder on your life. Your thinking hey I get the same cert. and I can do self study. Well hell why not. Not the attitude to have brother.

Vollies should strive to achieve the same training as professional fireman and should be held to the same standards.

[SWLAFireDawg]

By the way don't use some excuse that your just a vollie and you don't have the time because you have another job.

I was a Reserve FF for three years before I was hired as a professional fireman. During that time I worked a 60+ hour work week on a busy ambulance in a large city, and went to a fire academy. It can be done.

Like someone said above, half-assing it is an attitude. You know deep down you can go to an academy but it will be more intense and harder on your life. Your thinking hey I get the same cert. and I can do self study. Well hell why not. Not the attitude to have brother.

Vollies should strive to achieve the same training as professional fireman and should be held to the same standards.

Awesome for you.....that is quite an achievement.....personally it is hard to see how it would be possible to work 60+ hours per week, plus attend what I have read to be a 40 hour week academy, for 10 weeks. That only leaves roughly 9 hours per day to get in proper sleep, eat meals, study, travel between your home, job, and the academy, and oh by the way did you have a wife and children then? Or better yet did you have one after all that? I can't imagine that would be easy or advisable for a physically and mentally demanding fire academy. And that is assuming you were able to work the majority of your ambulance job on the weekends.

Let us also consider that the closest publicly available fire academy to me is 3hours away at LSU.

Unless I was to attend one of those 2 week rush throughs they advertise over in texas. Or is that what you did? That does change things a bit, but again you have to do some sort of self-study.

And all that only works if you work a job where evening or night shifts are possible, or your boss will adjust your schedule. My job isn't that easy to alter. I already work 12 hour shifts, on a rotating schedule, and I don't have anough vacation to take off 10 weeks for an academy. And working 12 hours at night after 8 hours at an academy isn't very safe, especially when you figure in I am a process operator in a refinery. Kind of a safety critical job.....

You call it an excuse, I call it a blessing. I have a great job that pays well and allows me to do things with my family I might not be able to otherwise. If I had to give that up to attend an academy in order to meet the expectations of what professional firefighters think we should be doing as volunteers I most likely would never volunteer. Heck, nobody in my dept would. I guess that makes us substandard in the world of firefighters.

I wonder if anybody ever considered it might be possible for a truly dedicated person to nail the largest portion of the knowledge, if not all of it, primarily by studying the essentials book and other reference material "by themselves"......I don't need somebody to read it to me. If I have questions on material, I have resources at the department to direct them to.

I agree that some of the practicals require a team effort, and that some of them are better learned by working with and learning with experienced instructors/firefighters. However, I do have some fire background and experience, and I am still on an industrial brigade. While there are plenty of differences between the two, there are plenty of similarities as well. Approximately half of the material in the essentials book is new to me, the rest I have training on already.

Keep in mind, I never commented that self-study would make me the world's best firefighter, or even a decent one. The only reason I asked is so I could prep for state certification.

As for half-assing being an attitude...if you apply a half-ass attitude to the studies you'll never pass....so that idea pretty much cancels it all out....you don't know even one firefighter with a half-ass attitude in your area....not even on a bad day once in a while? And if you learn the material, no matter what fashion, and you can pass a certification....does it really matter how you learned it? The certification tests which are given to the guys graduating from the LSU fire academy are the same tests given to us poor half-assing excuse filled incompetent vollies.

Keep the comments coming guys!

[Bones42]

Vollies should strive to achieve the same training as professional fireman and should be held to the same standards.As a side note...in NJ, the standards are the same.

[jerry4184]

Same thing in Pa.

In fact, there isn't an academy around here I could even go to, because PA only has the state fire academy in Lewistown, and maybe one or two college run academies.

[doughesson]

I didn't even know they offered such a thing. There is no way you could be as proficient as someone going to an actual academy.


Don't count on that,pal.My Captain on my old volunteer department is certified at the Instructor level in so many things,it's easier to list what he's NOT certified at(fireboat ops).
When I took the FF1 and 2 tests,those of us with enough training hours to take it got together and relearned how to raise and tie off ladders,stow hose,perform preincident planning inspections,use a foam proportioner,attack a pile of burning pallets,lay containment booms around a hazmat spill,etc.
Everyone of us that showed up passed.Those that didn't,didn't show up for the test either and had to take the expanded version later in 2006.
Basically,the test was just stuff we did on every call plus a few things that firefighters need to know anyway.That's the attitude you need to take to the testing site:This is stuff I already know"so you won't sweat it.

[clark918]

I didn't know that was possible either. They said we needed the required 96 hours of classroom time before we could take our tests and get our certificated in Wisconsin.

SWLA... Is there a weekend option available for you? I took mine on Saturdays. It was 8 hrs every Sat for a school semester.(About 16 weeks maybe?) That way it wouldn't interupt with your week as much. I went to college full time, worked a double shift on Sundays and left Saturdays just for that this past semester. Try to find a community college that offers a Saturday course, and everything should work out.

[SWLAFireDawg]

I didn't know that was possible either. They said we needed the required 96 hours of classroom time before we could take our tests and get our certificated in Wisconsin.

SWLA... Is there a weekend option available for you? I took mine on Saturdays. It was 8 hrs every Sat for a school semester.(About 16 weeks maybe?) That way it wouldn't interupt with your week as much. I went to college full time, worked a double shift on Sundays and left Saturdays just for that this past semester. Try to find a community college that offers a Saturday course, and everything should work out.


No weekend options that I am aware of, plus I work 2 weekends out of the month.

The parish emergency training center is doing classes for NFPA 1403, so I am going to take those and get certified for that first, and also study for FF1. It will be a good start, and hopefully by the end of it (July) the chief will have something worked out for an actual FF1 class at the dept.

[dmleblanc]

I am familiar with the on-line FFI training that SWLA is speaking of. First, taking the online class does NOT certify you as FFI. It only presents the knowledge portion of the training, and I think, does a pretty good job of it. But you will obviously have to follow up most sections with some hands-on practical skills training at your home department.

Let's take SCBA, for example. You complete the SCBA section. Now you have some knowledge of what an SCBA is for, how it works, why it's important to wear them, etc. Now it is incumbent upon you, the student, to get with someone at your department and go through the practical skills. The online class is not intended to be a substitute for practical skills, just an alternative way of gaining the "classroom" portion.

I think it's a good option for volunteer departments. As SWLA says, I don't know of any volunteer who is willing or able to quit their job for 10 weeks to go to LSU's fire academy (and they only offer it in a 40 hour a week format). Also, LSU in Baton Rouge is the only place in Louisiana you can attend the academy (that I know of)

If you're willing to quit your job for that period of time just so you can have the certification, plus shell out the couple of thousand bucks it would cost, so you can go and be a VOLUNTEER firefighter, you need to have your head examined. (Obviously if a career position is your goal, that would be different).

Additionally, before you are even allowed to sit and take the written test, you must first demonstrate your practical skills to a certified LSU instructor. You spend pretty much an entire day demonstrating such things as SCBA donning, raising ladders, knot tying, etc. Only once you have had an instructor sign off on your practical skills are you allowed to take the written test for certification.

I should also point out that the state of Louisiana has no mandatory training or certification requirements for being a firefighter. So I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of Louisiana (volunteer) firefighters are not nor will they ever be certified as FFI. Most training is done in-house, if it is done at all. If a department has a good training program, most people should be at least getting the knowledge and skills they need (remember, NFPA 1403 only specifies what a firefighter should know...it does not specify how the skills are to be learned, nor does it dictate a specific certification is required.)

[clark918]

Isn't there an online program where you take it all online, then you go to Texas for about a week to do all the physical stuff at once? That way you only have to take a week off from work.

[SWLAFireDawg]

Isn't there an online program where you take it all online, then you go to Texas for about a week to do all the physical stuff at once? That way you only have to take a week off from work.

Its 12 weeks online, 2 weeks of practicals.........and $2000.

And, Louisiana does not recognize Texas Academies or Texas Certifications, so I would still have to certify like I am planning on doing now. This way I keep my 2 grand and use my 2 weeks vacation elsewhere.

If LA recognized the training I would consider it though.

[clark918]

Wow $2000?! Didn't check that out. haha Well good luck with everything.

[kldugas412]

Dawg,

I self taught, Used the IFTA Essentials 4th Edition as study guide,
When I was ready I went to the Laf City Training center and did all of the practicals. Including the Don in 2:00 or less. The two man drills I had recruits to work with. Then you can chalange the test that LSU gives they ask that you submit the request 1 month ahead of time and the cost was 15$.

I'd get with the nerest paid Dept. and ask if there instrutors would witness the praticals and sign off on them. You must also have a valid CPR and Basic 1st aid Card

Just a tid bit of info you must have Haz Mat AW before you can take FF1

Leblanc ,
Thats our case I'm the ony FF1 on the rouster. That is not saying the guys we have are not great at doing what we do they just dont have the time to do all it takes to take the test time off of your real job needs to be spent with your family. I know for one I spend to mutch time at the station myself.

I have contacts with LSU mabe able to help set somthing you for you.

Email me if you have questions kldugas@bellsouth.net

[SWLAFireDawg]

Thanks for the info and response.....

I've done a little more calling around and found out I can certify on the practicals and the test at the parish Emergency Training Center....I have their testing schedule.

I've already done the First Responder/Cpr training, so I am covered there.

I have a Technician level Haz-Mat training from the industrial brigade I am on....I am checking in to it.....but I think I am covered there too.

I start NFPA 1403 classes on Feb 6, and a Mutual Aid Mini Basic Fire School with the parish in March for 3 days.......should help me a ton on practicals and knowledge.

If I get in a bind on something I'll give you a shout though.....and the local paid dept is almost useless right now due to political confrontations evolving in the leadership........but I am driven....I'll find a way.


I love this stuff!!