Looking into starting new team

[rlewis]

The Essex County Fire Chiefs are in the process of putting together a county tech rescue team consisting of a Northern and Southern Branch. I have been asked to help steer the team in these early stages. We are in the infancy stage of building the team and I believe we could learn from you and your people the things that worked for you when you were at this stage.

A few of the questions I am hoping to get answered are:

Equipment
Do you have your own radio frequency?
Do members have pagers or how are they notified?

Personnel
What initial qualification do you have to meet to be a member?
What standards do you have to keep to remain on the team (80% attendance rate, skills tests)?

Training
Did you hire an outside company to do initial training?
How many time a year do you train?
How do members get paid or reimbursed (training and emergencies)?

Other questions
What sources do you use for continued funding for the team?
Did you have any problems with unions when the team started out?
Do you have any SOP's you could send me?

YOu can also e-mail me direct
peabodyfire@aol.com

[ADSNWFLD]

Wow, what an undertaking, good luck.
I'll address our training requirements. Our Technical rescue team (TRT) participates in 4 core fields. Vertical, Confined Space, Trench and Collapse. We conduct personal team member validation on two topics a year. So everyone is validated every two years. Annually you need to attend two drill in each field for a total of 8 drills a year. The Illinois OSFM has ops and tech classes for each. Years ago we got outside training but now it is mostly OSFM. The goal is to be tech across the board however it is a slow process.

[N2DFire]

A little dated but still a decent resource.
http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pd...ons/fa-159.pdf
(File is ~ 5 MB)

[basslerga]

Essex county? what State? sounds like a great idea, good Luck!!!

[rlewis]

Essex County Massachusetts

[BUITRE]

GOOD LUCK ON YOUR NEW TASK.

I've been on Tech Rescue Team for almost 17 years now. We usually do the selection for the personel that will be part of the team. I will gladly help you out any way I can. Do you plan to have a multi disciplinary team. Or are you thinking speciallized on each area? Most of the rescue speciallity deals in some way at least one with Rope Rescue. Knots are used in everything. So I would suggest you start here. Of course, when we start talking about rescue, we have had Incident Comand First Aids and all other courses.

KEEP SAFE!