Lessons learned...

Some people love to train rookies, others hate to do it. My station decided to make me training officer since I always seemed to inherit the rookies so I spend a lot of my rotations training new members or members that just got their EMT certification. Last week's lesson was that even experienced people can make mistakes. Actually it was a two part lesson, the second part is titled "THIS is why I always yell at you to wear your seat belt!" While responding to a call in one of our response cars we had a little mishap that was almost a big mishap and would have turned our crew into our very own mass casualty incident. Everyone was okay and there was no major damage but it really showed them that mistakes happen and the best thing you can do is learn from them and move on. And always wear your seat belt! I joked with the member who was at the station and witnessed the incident that I had planned it all out as a training exercise...for some reason he didn't believe me.

The kicker is this incident happened a few days before the 4Th anniversary of our heavy rescue being involved in an accident while responding to a call. The driver, who is my brother, and the passenger were both injured but thankfully survived. One witness of the accident ran up to help and said "oh my God, you ARE alive. I don't know how." I'm sure that was very comforting for the crew to hear but then again, you don't expect to see a fire truck rolling down the interstate. No charges were pressed as it was caused by black ice but that was a heck of a reminder to our local departments that while we're here to help others we have to remember that we aren't invincible. That's the reason for my post today, we all get complacent and sometimes just have to be reminded that our safety comes first.