Holloman leads the way in fire safety

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Aaron Montoya
  • 49th Wing Public Affairs
HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE --  Once again Holloman leads the Air Force, this time with fire safety. Holloman was host to the Department of Defense Fire Officer 2 certification course from the Louis F. Garland DoD Fire Academy, at Goodfellow AFB, Texas. Fire Academy instructors from Goodfellow employed their new Advanced Disaster Management Simulator, an interactive video and computer training program.

"It is designed around incident command, and teaching our young firefighters how to establish command as soon as they get on scene, establish priorities and work the scene of an incident until someone more senior gets there," said Wayne Mello, Installation Fire Chief at Holloman.

This new technology is designed to stress and challenge fire ground leaders with interactive virtual incident simulations. The program places these leaders in various realistic emergency scenarios and allows them to function in a higher level of leadership, making decisions, assigning resources and directing tasks toward safe incident resolution.

"Anytime you have a multiagency response, the senior firefighter on scene becomes the incident commander. We are training them at the lower grades now so we can prepare them for the future to make sure they are prepared as incident commanders," said Mello.

The ADMS will be used throughout the DoD, however Holloman was the first in the Air Force to receive the program.

"This was the first Air Force base they have tried this training with, and it was successful, so I think you are going to see it a lot more throughout the Air Force and the DoD," said Mello.

This program is able to efficiently and quickly train and prepare the firefighters to be ready for various incidents and increased responsibility on scene.

"Our young kids are better prepared today than ever, they were able to go through two weeks of classroom training where they were introduced to the entire incident command system. The last three days they were able to use the computer interactive video system, and role played in each of the positions they would be working. They did great, their scores were all in the high 90s," said Mello.

Utilizing this new program, Holloman graduated nine firefighters in March, allowing each of them to assume a higher amount of responsibility when responding to an incident.

"They did it right the first time and did a good job," said Mello.