It is the time of year when the weather gets especially cold and ice is forming on the lakes and ponds. It is also when many departments start actually getting out on and in the ice to train for ice related emergencies.

One of the departments that I am a part of and others around us do train on this topic. The question has been raised by many, some legitimately concerned and others just trying to stay out of the ice, if a person should be trained to technician level before he/she enters the water?

Ice rescue training being performed, is it required?

I personally am not a technician trained ice rescuer, although I have had a great deal of training for ice rescues. I do have technician level training in other areas and have to say that I learned a great deal in those courses, stuff that could keep you alive.

If I read the standard correct, any incident that requires special or technical training has different levels of certification and training. Most of these categories all abide by the awareness, operations and technician hierarchy.

With that in mind, the department and departments that I am familiar with will typically have a short in-service on the equipment and safety guidelines and then when the ice gets thick enough, we throw our own in the water to be victims and rescuers.

The practical answer to if we should be tech level certified before we enter the ice is that it is difficult and expensive at best to get our people all trained to that level. The ideal answer is “yes”, we should have our people properly trained before putting them in harms way. Where is the line crossed or should it be? Are these tech level certifications going to need to be mandatory for our firefighters, even if they are not interested in that subject matter? But, the subject matter is protecting our citizens and the job is dynamic and ever changing, right? What do all of you do and think?

Personally, I think there should be more than just an in-service and then throw people in the lake, tend to getting our personnel certified in the areas that we have risk for. But, we don’t make every member become HazMat Techs or Swiftwater Techs, so I don’t know that making them Ice Rescue Techs is appropriate either. It is a very interesting dilemma I do see the day where those certifications will be required for all academy graduates or at least at an operational level. Actually, the current graduates at the local academy does require hazmat ops for graduation. I think that this is going to be a hot topic in the years to come. Where do you all see this in our roles as emergency responders?

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