 |
| CLICK here for daily flag status |
|
|
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2019
Website is updated every Friday - Important interim updates will be posted when necessary
Next regular update is Friday, February 15th.
|
 |
| CLICK to monitor HFD radio |
|
|
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
Editor's Note: For the first time since this website got started nearly ten years ago, I beg the indulgence of our website visitors for the following articles in which I am prominently featured. Until now, I have resisted publishing any articles or photos that focus on, well, me, lest this website ever be dubbed "the Dave Johnson website" - which it most certainly is not.
Humility is all very noble and virtuous, I guess, but it should never get in the way of a good story, or highlighting the good works of others. In this case, it is retired Batt. Chief Tom Doherty who deserves most of the credit for a project begun over 30 years ago that was intended to make our jobs more efficient and his fellow firefighters safer - a project that showed great promise. Enjoy.
Dave Johnson
February 8, 2019
|
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
30 Years Ago
HFD Training Division Pioneers Video as a Training Aid
by Dave Johnson
|
 |
| Ff. Jerry Dinneen |
|
Today, almost everyone carries a hi-rez video camera in his or her iPhone. But thirty years ago those murky low-rez home videos were a fairly expensive luxury.
Beginning in the early 1980s, after Firefighter Gerry Dinneen used his own video equipment to record various department activities, HFD training officer Dep. Chief John Tramontano began experimenting with home video as a training aid. Storer Cable TV even lent the department some of their video equipment to make a short video on Hamden Central Communications.
Unfortunately, that video was never completed due to technical problems, but we have some snippets of that effort and will likely make them available in the future. Those video clips are now a wonderful snapshot of some department activities (and personnel) of 35 years ago.
|
Efforts to exploit in-house video production for training continued. After your webmeister was appointed training officer in September 1984, the department purchased five VCR playback units, one for each station, from Crazy Eddie's (remember them?). The Connecticut State Commission on Fire Prevention and Control, then located in Meriden, made available many IFSTA training videos on various topics for presentation during company training sessions. The department eventually bought some of its own IFSTA training videos.
Video proved to be a very effective way to get the message across.
|
 |
| Cmdr. Doherty, Videographer |
|
In 1985, the Training Division acquired its first video equipment, a separate camera and shoulder pack VCR. Within a year or so, the advent of the personal "camcorder," with a far superior resolution, made the separate video camera and shoulder pack obsolete.
We used video to document fires, training sessions, and several department events including the department's first Awards Ceremony in October 1985. But perhaps the best use of video was in making our own custom-made training videos.
For years, Commander (B/C) Tom Doherty had been concerned by the growing number of apartments and condominiums in Hamden and wondered if we might produce a video to show the potential problems facing the fire department.
|
 |
| The camcorder |
|
During the latter part of August 1988, Tom and I traveled all over town, taking videos of dozens and dozens of Hamden apartment and condo complexes, some of them still under construction, for a fourteen-minute video to show to our personnel. We also developed a simple, five-step plan on how fire departments might address the situation. Tom came up with the perfect title, "Building Up to a Disaster."
The completed video was a little hokey, to be sure, but the whole point of it was to enlighten our firefighters to the growing number of multiple family occupancies in our town and the potential hazards they presented.
The Connecticut State Commission on Fire Prevention and Control immediately expressed interest in making "Building Up to a Disaster" available to other departments, and we gave them several VHS copies. We even heard from the Baltimore Fire Department, which requested more information on our efforts to make our own training videos.
Check out "Building Up to a Disaster" (below). See also the articles about our video projects, published thirty years ago this week in The New Haven Register and The Hamden Chronicle.
Posted 2/8/2018
|
This 1988 video, produced by the Training Division of the Hamden Fire Department, was designed to familiarize and increase firefighters' awareness of the growing number of multiple family dwellings in our town - and to inspire other departments to do the same.
"Building Up to a Disaster," the brain child of Commander (B/C) Thomas Doherty and HFD training officer, Capt. Dave Johnson, was a pioneering effort by a Connecticut fire department to produce its own in-house videos as training aids. It was followed a few months later by "Pre-planning for Disaster."
In the 30 years since this VHS video was produced, there have been fires in several of the "built to burn" occupancies featured in the video. Several of the buildings featured in the six-minute rapid montage of Hamden apartments and condos are no longer there.
NOTE: There are some small audio glitches due to the age of the master dub tape as well as some digitization issues.
Posted 2/8/2019
|
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
On Friday, January 27, 1989, Hamden Chronicle reporter Traci Bickmore interviewed Cmdr. Tom Doherty and Capt. Dave Johnson for an article she was writing about their training videos. The three of them met behind the main building of The Commons at Mill River at 75 Washington Avenue, where she took the photo that accompanied her article.
The main building was part of a complex of four buildings that had served as the Sleeping Giant Junior High School from 1958 until it closed in 1983, when it was sold to a private party to be converted into condominiums for senior citizens.
We recently found the video being taken by Capt. Johnson when he and Cmdr. Doherty were photographed by Ms. Bickmore. Check it out. The conclusion of the 2-minute video shows the dramatic growth of the complex since 1989 - and MapQuest's need for revising their information. (Do they still call JFK Int'l Airport "Idlewild?")
|
 |
| CLICK TO ENLARGE FOR EASIER READING |
|
|
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
|
NEVER FORGET!
We will always remember our brother firefighters who made the supreme sacrifice, and the thousands of other innocent victims who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
Always keep them, their families and the FDNY in your thoughts and prayers.
|
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|
|
