FACILITY FIRE BRI FIRE AND EMERGENCY SERVICES INS FIRE PROTECTION, DETECTION, AN
FIRE SERVICE HYDRAULICS AND WATER SUPPLY HAZARDOUS MATERIALS TECHNICIAN PRINCIPLES OF PASSENGER VEHICLE EXTRICATION GROUND COVER FIRE FIGHTING FOR STRUCTURAL FIREFIGHTERS
invited to speak at the school, including Col. Clarence Goldsmith, chief engineer of the National Board of Underwriters; Harry K. “Smokey” Rogers and Richard Vernon of the Western Actuarial Bureau, a regional subdivision of the National Bureau of Fire Underwriters (NBFU); Professor H.R. Brayton of the inorganic chemistry department at Texas A&M College; and Ed Stewart of the Kansas Inspection Bureau, and H.J. Clark of the Oklahoma Inspection Bureau, representing the state fire insurance industry. During the 1932 meeting when one of these outside speakers was called home unexpectedly, a member of the audience was asked to replace him. That was how Fred Heisler came into the fire service.
Heisler, a veteran teacher in the Ponca City, Oklahoma, school system, had come to the trade and industrial education department at Oklahoma A&M as an itinerant teacher trainer in 1932 (Figure 3) . He firmly believed that workers, even in unskilled jobs, would work better and with more satisfaction if they understood the basic processes and purposes behind the job. As fire fighting then was considered unskilled or barely skilled work, Heisler was interested in the fire training schools. That he knew nothing about fire fighting mattered little because he brought a peculiar talent to the sessions of the fire school. Heisler knew instinctively how to draw ideas out of others, collate them and present them in a logical, learnable manner. Heisler’s talent became especially useful as an old problem re-emerged from the discussions at the training schools. The firefighters attending the schools needed training manuals to train in their hometown fire departments. Since no one knew a firefighter’s job better than a firefighter, several experienced chiefs were asked
Figure 3
to return to Stillwater to participate in a series of meetings to analyze the business of fire fighting. Because Heisler had successfully handled the earlier meeting, a committee consisting of Pence, Taplin, and Edward Haley of Ada, Oklahoma, asked him to design a course of study for firefighter training. Under Heisler’s leadership the chiefs, working with Brayton, Clark and Goldsmith, met in July 1933 and discussed all aspects of fire fighting — its tools, techniques, and terminology. Together, they identified 10 basic fire fighting skills: • Forcible entry, rope and portable extinguisher practices • Ladder practices • Hose practices • Salvage practices • Fire stream practices • Fire apparatus practices • Ventilation practices
• Rescue practices • First aid practices • Inspection practices
Heisler took this raw information and compiled it during the winter of 1934 to produce An Introductory Course, the first of a long series of manuals (Figure 4) . This first manual, and a second one on ladder practices that followed in the spring of 1935, were simple 8½ x 11 inch, handbound, mimeograph productions that were sold in the college bookstore for 35 cents each.
Figure 4
IFSTA/FPP: THE FIRST 90 YEARS 7
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator