Surface Warfare Officers School Unit (SWOSU) Great Lakes (GL) held a ribbon cutting ceremony unveiling the Live Fire Fighting Trainer (FFT), Dec. 7.

Rear Adm. Richard A. Brown, Commander of Navy Personnel Command/Deputy Chief of Naval Personnel, was a special guest at the ceremony for the facility that will be used for the course that will train more than 10,000 Sailors annually.

"In the Navy, we continuously work on our qualifications and readiness so we are always prepared for any mission, at any time," Brown said. "I have deployed numerous times and the mission always evolves, so we must always be prepared. This firefighting trainer is precisely what we need to ensure our fleet Sailors are ready to respond in a time of crisis."

Following staff training and qualification the mandatory Surface General Shipboard Firefighting course will begin on Feb 2017. Once online, the training will be delivered to all Surface Accessions Sailors attending SWOSU, Center for Surface Combat Systems Unit Great Lakes, as well as staff members at the various commands across Great Lakes as they transfer back to sea duty.

"As Commanding Officer of SWOSU GL and a former Chief Engineer on several warships, I am very excited about the strengthening to damage control training and warfighting readiness," said Cmdr. Eric Williams, commanding officer of SWOSU GL.

Attending the firefighting course while at a Great Lakes area command will save ships countless man-hours in planning, scheduling, and sending personnel to trainers prior to arriving to the command, or after they have already arrived.

"The life of a ship and our shipmates may someday depend on the training our Sailors receive at our facility," said Senior Chief Petty Officer Eric Sanders, Damage Control School department leading chief petty officer, SWOSU GL. "This course is designed to prepare each Sailor for qualification as a member of a shipboard damage control organization."

According to Sanders, the course provides training on fire chemistry, classes of fires (Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie), damage control team organization, protective clothing, portable extinguishers, self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA), and hose-handling and general shipboard firefighting techniques in a classroom setting and FFT.

FFT in Great Lakes was originally commissioned in 1996 to provide realistic training for students at Damage Control "A" School until 2002, when all accession engineering students began receiving the training. The trainer provided live firefighting training continuously until 2006, when a combination of fiscal constraints and a requirement review determined that the training was met through other courses in the trainee pipeline.

Subsequent increases in basic firefighting requirements created a situation where firefighting training in the Fleet concentration areas were incapable of keeping up with Fleet needs, ultimately resulting in a significant backlog.

Discussions began in 2010 to determine the feasibility and cost associated with re-lighting the FFT in Great Lakes but a plan of action was not agreed upon and placed into effect until Surface Warfare Officers School Command, Commander Navy Installations Command, Naval Facilities Engineering Command, and Naval Air Warfare Command, with resources from Surface Training Systems (PMS 339), hired Jacobs Engineering to scope the project and reconstruction efforts for the facility started in late 2015.

"Shipboard life requires every Sailor to be a firefighter if need be and the training that we provide here is by far the most important training the crew of a ship can receive," Sanders said.



For more information, visit http://www.navy.mil, http://www.facebook.com/usnavy, or http://www.twitter.com/usnavy.


For more news from Training Support Center, Great Lakes, visit http://www.navy.mil/.