In April of 2008 we told you about Knox College in Galesburg, IL conducting a prescribed fire with the students wearing no person protective equipment. Here is one of the photos from that article.
Now it turns out that one of the premier forestry schools in the world, the Yale School of Forestry, also conducts prescribed fires with the participants wearing no PPE except for hard hats. One of the “lecturers”, we’ll give her a small amount of credit, was wearing a Nomex shirt.
They posted a video of their research burn on the web. There is no way to imbed it, but HERE is a link. It is titled F&ES Students with Prof. Cam Fighting Wildfires With Fire.
Here are some screen grabs from the video.
Here is more proof that the policy of very little PPE at Yale is institutionalized, in this photo from the 2002 Yale Forest News which shows a Masters of Forestry student.
It is inconceivable to me how professors at a college or university, TEACHING fire classes, can train their students to conduct prescribed fires without at least Nomex pants and shirts. Or even long-sleeve cotton shirts.
Some of the federal land management agencies are requiring college degrees for the higher-level fire management jobs. Of course the graduates all have to be re-trained.
Unbelievable. If there’s somewhere I took for granted that safety would be stressed, it would be in a training enviroment. That’s where you lay the foundation, and your own personal safety must always be job #1. This seems very unprofessional to me.If you’re not taught the importance of using proper PPE when training, when will you be told then? And as the article says, even long-sleeved cotton shirts can make a huge difference if the ****, or fire, hits the fan.
Shows a lack of field experience and common sense.