The Suffolk County Fire Academy has been working to establish the 2020 training schedule. You may have noticed that we are no longer offering the Rapid Intervention Team/Firefighter Rescue (RIT/FFR) course or the Heavy Rescue I course as an option for your department to host exclusively next year.
Unfortunately, we were forced to cancel five of the thirteen (13) RIT/FFR courses and two of the thirteen (13) Heavy Rescue I courses offered this year due to low/no enrollment. This accounted for one hundred and sixteen (116) unused instructor sessions which may have been used for other training initiatives.
To be more efficient in our scheduling and increase student enrollment, the decision was made to include RIT/FFR and Heavy Rescue I among our open enrollment courses here at the Academy. We will host ten (10) RIT/FFR and Heavy Rescue I courses next year. Students will be required to register for the courses via the open enrollment link on the SCFA website. This may be done sixty (60) days prior, up to two days before the first class. We encourage your department to review the dates of these courses, outlined below, with your members so they may enroll and participate, as a group, if they so desire. We also ask that students are mindful of the prerequisites (Firefighter I for RIT/FFR, Firefighter I or Scene Support for Heavy Rescue I) as they will not be eligible to participate in a course if the prerequisite is not satisfied.
We will also be offering a host of technical rescue courses in the 2020 calendar year. We will begin with the required awareness level classes in the winter, continue with Rescue Technician Basic and Confined Space Technician as well as Basic Structural Collapse Operations and Medium Structural Collapse Concepts classes in the spring, and culminate with Trench Rescue Operations level in the fall (see dates below). If a student wishes to participate in this cadre of technical rescue course, he/she must do so in the correct order to satisfy the prerequisites needed throughout the course offerings. The classes offered this year will act as a foundation for more advanced technical rescue courses we intend to host in the future.
As always, we thank you for the opportunity to provide the best training available to you and your department’s membership. It is our pleasure to be involved with the process of providing unmatched fire, rescue, and emergency services to the people of Suffolk County. Please do not hesitate to contact me with questions and/or concerns regarding these initiatives.
Andrew Dinkel
Assistant Chief, Program Development
