National Wildfire Coordinating Group

RT-130, Wildland Fire Safety Training Annual Refresher (WFSTAR)

Communication Tools

RT-130 Decorative banner. Group of photos depicting wildland firefighters performing various duties.

Learn the five communication responsibilities of every firefighter that create clear and effective communications, and the various tools used to convey them.
Category: Leadership
Core Component(s): Incident Reviews and Lessons Learned;
Human Factors, Communication and Decision Making
Estimated Delivery Time: 30 minutes; Video Length: 9:48

 

Intent

Apply the five communication responsibilities to past experiences in order to build on successes and learn from mistakes.

Facilitator Preparation

  • Review the two videos and module tools.
  • Consider additional activities and discussion questions relevant to the location and agency.

Facilitating the Discussion

  • Show the video.
  • Facilitate a small or large group discussion using the discussion questions below.

Discussion Questions

Review the five communication responsibilities from the video and instruct participants to use them as a guide during discussion:

  • Brief others as needed.
  • Debrief your actions.
  • Communicate hazards to others.
  • Acknowledge messages.
  • Ask if you don’t know.

Think of an experience on an incident when you were involved in a miscommunication. In groups, choose one experience and answer the following questions:

  1. Why did the miscommunication occur? What tools were not used or misused?
  2. What impact did it have?
  3. If you had a chance to do it over again, what specifically would you do differently?

Think of a recent example on an incident where effective communication lead to a successful outcome. Use the same analytical method as above to answer the following questions:

  1. How did the communication occur (tools, methods, techniques used)?
  2. What impact did it have?
  3. What lesson can you learn from this example that can be applied to an incident in the future?

Resources

Additional Video Information

This video is also available as a download. (Size 125 MB)
Download the .srt file for closed captioning (you may need to right-click and Save As). For information on how to add closed captioning to a video, see this how-to page.

Note: For Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, right click the word download and select Save Link As; for Internet Explorer (IE), right click and select Save Target As.

 

 

Print This WFSTAR Module

 

 

 

Page Last Modified / Reviewed: 
2023-04-06

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