Is There Any Benefit to the Traditional Timed Donning Drill?

摘要

We have all experienced the training session of timed donning: the evaluation of a trainee's speed and proficiency to go from normal street clothes to a fully encapsulated thermally and respiratory protected firefighter ready to battle heat, smoke, and toxic gases. Completion time with no deficiencies is usually expected to be under two minutes. I ask you, When has anyone ever seen or done this on a fireground? When the bell sounds in the station, do personnel fully don personal protective clothing (PPC) and self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) to go on air prior to departing? Arriving in a personal vehicle at the scene, do personnel hop out of the car and breathe air from an SCBA two minutes later? Both of these scenarios seem nonsensical, yet that is the way we are trained. Another imperfection of the two-minute donning drill is that the sequence sometimes is allowed to have no particular structure as long as there is a transformation from civilian to a firefighter on air in the allotted time. I have seen it perfectly acceptable to don a face mask as the very first piece of PPC in a donning drill or to be on air while adjusting helmet straps or putting on gloves.