A firefighter arrives at the 3rd floor window and swings a leg over the sill and feels the ladder move under his foot. Only does 1 inch.

Imagine it’s 0200 hours and it’s a residential structure fire with heavy smoke coming out of the second floor. A crew enters the building through the front door with a handline and a truck company

If you ask ten fire officers about their training program, you’ll get ten different answers, all of which have been wrapped in ten different words: “We drill when we can.”

A volunteer crew once drilled forcible entry into a shined-up steel prop for an entire weekend at a regional academy. Each rep was a clean rep. Two weeks later,

Spend an hour at any fire department training ground in the country, and within minutes, you can tell whether the crew is actually training or just going through the motions.

Forcible entry looks easy until you’ve tried it. Anyone can swing an axe. Very few can swing one cleanly while wearing full PPE, breathing off an SCBA, watching smoke roll out of a doorway,