Butler firefighter completes national training program
A Butler firefighter added another notch to his belt through his participation in a national education program for firefighters.
Butler City Council recognized Tim Iman, a lieutenant with the Butler Bureau of Fire, Thursday, Dec. 21, for finishing the National Fire Academy’s Managing Officer Program. The program involves a multiyear curriculum that teaches emergency service leaders personal and professional skills in change management, risk reduction and adaptive leadership, according to the National Fire Academy.
Chris Switala, chief of the Butler Bureau of Fire, said at the Thursday city council meeting that Iman applied to get into the course, which takes place in Emmitsburg, Md., and the program costs nothing to participants. He added that it is designed to take about two years to complete.
“It’s a very nice program that benefits municipalities as well, because you get training for free; they also cover travel costs for participants and provide dorm rooms while they’re there,” Switala said. “They do that so they can bring firefighters from the whole United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, and you get to interact with firefighters from all across the country.”
According to Switala, the National Fire Academy was created in 1973 by the U.S. Fire Administration to address the number of deaths by fire the nation had been seeing around that time. Switala said fire fatalities have been cut in half over the 50 years that the program has been in place.
He also said the courses taught through the program are “upper level” courses that have prerequisites and post-course activities. It culminates in a capstone research project, for which Iman developed a fire investigation standard operating procedure, which Switala said is one of Iman’s specialty areas.
“It includes courses on applications on community risk reduction to affect some fire prevention in the community,” Switala said, “creating a culture of safety within your department at the crew level, dealing with training challenges within the department and at the crew level, and then analytical tools for decision-making.
“It gets a fire department away from just going on a whim or making a decision into making a decision based on data.”
Having heard Switala explain the details of the program and the work that goes into completing it, Iman simply thanked the department and council for the recognition. In 2022, Iman accepted an invitation to join Pennsylvania Strike Team 1, which is an urban-search-and-rescue team that operates in Allegheny County.
