r/Firefighting May 22 '25

Videos Firefighter training. What are your thoughts?

462 Upvotes

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106

u/That_guy_again01 May 22 '25

Look up lead leg forward search. Search like this will make you fall in a hole when you find one. Also it’s slow and forces you to keep your head down. Lead leg forward does all of the opposite.

6

u/jarboxing May 22 '25

YouTubing "lead leg forward search" yields golf videos.

11

u/That_guy_again01 May 22 '25

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5bvh2LKZ0 Go to the 13min mark. Although there is some other good stuff throughout the video

1

u/KrankenwagenKolya LT/EMT-P May 22 '25

Is that a newer technique, back when I was at the academy we were doing head first for everything including ladder window entry, we just used a pile or irons to sound the floor as we went

5

u/Repulsive-Peach435 May 22 '25

It's been around a while. Our dept stopped crawling 15 years ago or so. Not only is tripod ssfer, it's way faster.

25

u/charizardsflame May 22 '25

For searching in an open area, yes.. they are in a confined space prop however, there’s no way you are tripoding through a maze.

11

u/That_guy_again01 May 22 '25

I wouldn’t recommend it unless I’ve done it. Also we have 60+ recruits per class do it through tougher areas than this.

-2

u/charizardsflame May 22 '25

Good on you Mrs. Incredible. I’m just saying it looks like they just crawled through a smaller area and if it’s their first time going through this, they won’t know that they have room to change stances. There’s no 1 perfect way to do anything.

5

u/Fly_throwaway37 May 23 '25

Anyone who's gone through the Drager Trailer knows ain't nobody going one foot forward through that.

4

u/Firm-Mission3857 May 23 '25

There’s plenty of room to get their head up and tripod through that space. I would venture to say they just don’t know any better and that’s the only way they’ve been shown. Not their fault, they don’t know what they don’t know. That’s why outside training is so important to growth in the fire service. We have to get out of our bubble and expose ourselves to as much as possible

5

u/PerrinAyybara All Hazards Capt Obvious May 22 '25

There's clearly enough room, this is NOT a confined space prop. There may be more than one way but this is clearly not the optimal one and just because you lack experience, education or training on doing it a different way doesn't mean you are right.

4

u/That_guy_again01 May 22 '25

You can literally see them rounding the corners on all four and not on their stomach. So I’m going to say you’re not correct. And in this case, there is a wrong way to do it and not sure why it’s upsetting you so much that there are better ways to do things. It’s the reason most of us go to trainings and look at this Reddit. To see what we can improve on.

1

u/Orgasmic_interlude May 23 '25

The way you’re taught to primary search in fire academy is just not great. It is not even remotely close to real life. Guys come out of academy and will take ten minutes to search a single room.

-4

u/apatrol May 22 '25

Yall crawl backwards? All the time or just on floors that could collapse?

28

u/Dman331 FF2/EMT-B May 22 '25

You're not crawling. It's more of a tripod. I stick my right leg out, pull myself forward with it while i push off with my left arm and leg. Leaves my right hand available for searching, and if I encounter a hole/obstacles with my lead leg, all the weight is on my other limbs and it prevents me from falling into something. In my limited experience, it's THE way to search/move around an IDLH if I can't walk

5

u/FunkyMonkeysPaw May 22 '25

It’s not crawling backwards, your more of sitting on your back heal/on that knee, and you bring your “lead” foot out, it lets you feel if there is anything you’re gonna trip/get cause on, while allowing you the position to really get that leg pretty far out, I like to kinda hit my heel down to test the floor too. But the base argument is that your weight is back, your lead foot checks the floor, if you find no floor you’re not fully stepping on that foot.

5

u/Vrasz May 22 '25

Lol he said look it up. Definitely not crawling backwards. It's an upright posture, sitting back on one heel and extending the other foot forward, sounding the floor with that heel, and then planting that foot and pulling your body forward onto the ground that you just checked with that heel.

If there's a hole or soft spot the lead foot finds it, but the majority of your body weight is back away from the risk. And with an upright body you can actually look forward instead of staring at the floor underneath you or the brim of your helmet