Fire Manuals
Alex Quintanilla
Jose Musse has brought to light a theme that is justifiable to members of the fire service. When the State of Texas was looking at creating a standard for Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighting a group of firefighters from all types of airports and even non-airport cities participated.
This group was selected among firefighters who participated in the yearly reunions the State of Texas Education and Standards Office held for continuing education for Texas Fire Firefighters that were certified.Before certification in the State of Texas we as a city fire department certified by our own standards.
In light of that the states notice that some cities had fewer hours of training and training being done by instructors who had minimum knowledge the in the area of expertise.When we as instructors in aviation started, several cities in which airport firefighting was done by people hired to refuel aircrafts were the same as firefighters.
I can recall El Paso, Texas in which later they did something to better themselves. As a participant in the committee we followed the standard Canada had in place and started testing our firefighters with skills and cognitive tests. The plan had great success and proves to be the mechanisms to improving the training.
Dallas/Ft Worth had the lead for all of this to happen thanks to them it gave us the small departments the training to reach the level of education. I am proud to say it has been successful and Texas A&M adopted the curriculum for Spanish Firefighter who I instructed in Laredo, Texas for Mexico as pilot training and later thanks to American Airlines that provide the tickets for us to travel to Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Venezuela to show case our training.
To provide a guide line to the question being asked for Mr. Jose Musse to explain is like trying to solve the never answer why he does his job in writing so well. Our Fire Chief Mike B. Perez who was a one of the pioneers of Fire Fighting for Texas A&M , Escuela en Español, always told me the same thing. You could have been a participant of the manual writing but that is something that has to be proven in time and adjustments are done at the level in which it applies, i.e. small departments compared to large department.
The manual is just a tool to draw information from and is not a given thing that has to be met or either you develop a test for such manual. The reason that Jose Musse has taken the interest in providing a method to use for training of firefighters does not mean that his words are written stone, it’s a way of getting firefighters trained in a manner that is equibilant to standards already in place by proven tactics.
In my best opinion is the real person who can do all the firefighting tactics, administer and otherwise known it all even exist?
I once met Chief Allen Burnacini, Phoenix Fire Dept. and author of the ICS manual. The then said ”an expert is a person who knows 300 ways to make love but knows no women”. I have done a lot of work in translating manuals which are similar to the originals but not author the book even thought I could.
I respect the job Jose Musse is doing for Latin America’s firefighters and can say he is no expert but does bring to life a lot of information not easily accessible. When the time comes for Jose to be an ICS Commander he has friend that will be able to find those answers he needs and that is what I call” Unified Incident Command System.”
* Haz-Mat Investigator/Instructor (Grade 32) City of Laredo. Industrial Haz-waste coordinator, Boots & Coots Special Services. Instructor Haz-Mat Team (Bilingual) Retired Captain/Instructor Laredo Fire Department, 25 years.
Publicaciones de José Musse, el bombero más leído e influyente en idioma español.
