How long of an absence before before re-training

[Captain8603]

If a member is to leave the volunteer fire service for an extended lenght of time should that member have to attend a basic fire academy again? If so how long of an absence, 1 year, 2years, 3 years etc.

My personal opinion would be after 3 years of inactivity members should be required to retake Firefighter 1.

What does everyone else think?

[nameless]

6 months or longer at least do an inhouse refresher/update. After a year or 2 of inactivity, it'd probably be best to just redo firefighter I.

[Eng34FF]

Lots of variables in this. Is the person coming back to the same department? How long were they active before they left and how active were they before they left? Being gone 2 yrs for a person who was active for 2 yrs is different than someone who was active for 20 yrs.

My preference would be to watch them during drills to see how they are doing. After a few drills, you can determine if they need more or less of a refresher. I know you would probably lose me if you expected me spend a lot of time going back through FF1 after I had advanced well beyond that.