In today’s fire service, we are called on to mitigate many types of situations. With the increased requests for service, and constant continuing education training requirements, it is difficult for members to stay current with the structures in their response area. Often times information on “dangerous” buildings is passed down from other members, but we are still not able to pass on all of the important preplan information to our members that we would like.
Using some simple flipped fire training techniques, we have been able to get this information to our members while working around our demanding call load and required training schedules. Using a combination of Explain Everything, Google Earth and a Camera we have been able to provide a virtual walkthrough of commercial buildings in our response area. This technique provides a great way for firefighters to review buildings that they may not have seen recently.
As we began to use this technology for our reviews, and occasional company drills, it became apparent that it could be valuable to our new hires as well. We realized if we could compile a library of these preplan videos, our new employees could also use them as an initial familiarization of structures in our response area. It is true that there is no replacement for actually walking through the structures. However, this is just not practical for all employees every year in most fire departments. We have recently began to incorporate using videos of the walkthroughs in addition to still images to create an even more interactive experience for our members. Below is a demo video of a preplan that was created using the software mentioned above.