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WAHMR |
WAHMR President Doug Rohn
Hello all! I would like to introduce myself to those who do not know me. My day job is as a firefighter with the City of Madison Fire Department. I have been a firefighter for around 23years, the last 15 with Madison. During this time, I have served as a Firefighter, Apparatus Engineer, Lieutenant, Code Enforcement Officer, and Training Officer. I’m currently assigned to Station 6, which is the home base of our hazmat team. I have been teaching for the Madison Area Technical College Fire Service Education Center part-time for the past 14 years. I really enjoy my role as an educator. That may be why I feel so strongly about providing quality training and am proud of my role in WAHMR. I joined WAHMR the first time I heard of it. I have attended every conference faithfully and have found the organization is providing a training niche that can’t be filled elsewhere for a quarter of the cost. Simply put, where can you find the same bang for the buck? Our yearly convention is the highlight of our training calendar, but it doesn’t end there. Part of the cost of membership is the eligibility to receive training grants that can be used to advance the level of you and your organization. Click here for Scholarship Information. One of our greatest challenges is training everyone so that they are on the same response page. I am very happy that the State of Wisconsin Vocational Technical College System has adopted "Managing The Incident 3rd Edition" as it's textbook for Hazardous Materials Technician. A (large) group of educators, responders, and industry hazmat guru's had many (many) meetings. Every curriculum we could find was evaluated and checked for compliance to NFPA 472. Since Wisconsin responders are mandated to conform to NFPA 472, we found this to be an important benchmark. I believe that we will seriously increase the professionalism of our responders by following this curriculum. The only knock I've heard about the curriculum is the prerequisites. The prerequisites are that the student successfully complete Awareness, Operations, and some NIMS classes. While this does increase the hours needed to make a Technician (that's bad?), it does conform to the spirit of NFPA 472. WAHMR purchased an independently validated test bank for the VocTech system to use to test our Technicians at the end of the course. Our next step is to get the Technical College System to issue a Certification. This is going to take some work, so your support is welcome. In closing, I would like to ask you to support WAHMR by encouraging all of your responders and administrators to join our organization. We do gain strength through numbers. Our united voice is already being heard in government. Make us strong.
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