The Maritime Fire & Safety Association’s Fire Protection Agencies Advisory Council conducted their third quarter Technician Level Training on September 19th at the Port of Vancouver. In addition to critical components of Technician Level Training such as gathering critical incident information from onboard a vessel and relaying that information to the Incident Commander in a way that helps mitigate the incident safely and efficiently a current focus for recent training has been focusing on learning more about the unique aspects of port facilities.
To try and satisfy these topics, third quarter training focused on port facility familiarization during training activities at the Port of Vancouver (POV). In the morning, Mr. Todd Krout, the Director of Operations with POV gave a safety briefing and an overview of POV operations before boarding a bus to tour the entire port facility. Mr. Krout was an excellent guide and his knowledge of the facilities made the tour interesting in addition to identifying critical hazards and locations throughout the port. We are grateful to the Port of Vancouver hosting an impactful training event.
The use of a tour bus was a great way to ensure that all participants received the same message simultaneously. It was also a great unity building exercise as participants discussed challenges they saw with others from different fire agencies.
In the afternoon we reassembled in the port’s training room and practiced repetitions of reconnaissance operations (Recon) mostly dedicated to the POV. The scenarios went according to plan and the groups worked through the material collaboratively. During the classroom information gathering scenarios, the participants were divided into small groups of mixed agencies to distribute knowledge in a productive setting. The scenarios were a mix of emergencies starting with a dispatch and en-route information creating a sense of urgency.
Some of the participants training alongside technicians had limited maritime knowledge and the use of terms related to the field caused some confusion e.g., forepeak, forecastle, bosun’s store. This provided an opportunity to reinforce the need to communicate effectively across a wide range of knowledge levels in the event of a shipboard fire emergency.