Underground car park fires are particularly dangerous - especially for the firefighters. That is why the International Fire Academy has developed a special intensive course. It has now been offered as a «mixed course» for the first time in which individual members of different fire services could participate. The aim is to allow as many fire services as possible to deal with the particular challenges of fires in underground car parks. The 2024 dates have already been advertised.

Two topics dominated the feedback from the firefighters from Belgium who completed the one-and-a-half-day intensive underground car park course at our training car park: tactical ventilation and hose management. Many things were new and good for the participants, which they are now evaluating for further training at home.

The underground car park leaflet is more than just a handout for our intensive course. It takes the concept of our teaching posters and translates it into a compact format for on-site training. The texts are reduced to a few words and provide the crucial keywords for the illustrations in German, English, French and Italian. Photographs from actual operations, our training operations and installations in underground car parks relevant to operations provide the necessary illustrative material in…

Even though underground car parks are underground transport systems, the operating conditions differ significantly from those of a fire in a tunnel. Therefore, full-time instructors, together with the Didactics and Development Team of the International Fire Academy, developed tactical principles and guidance on practical procedures for operations in underground car parks. They are taught in the underground car park intensive course.

More and more hydrogen-powered vehicles are on the roads and thus also in tunnels and underground car parks. That is why the International Fire Academy is involved in the «HyResponder» project. With fire services and fire service schools from several European countries, a special training course is to be developed for vehicles and systems with fuel cell technology. At the halfway point of the three-year project, we provide an interim report in the following.

In 2002 we developed our first didactic concept. The focus was on how the tunnel training facilities must be designed to provide both realistic and sufficiently safe training conditions. The now updated didactic concept of the International Fire Academy focuses on the learning model and teaching methods that underlie our training operations: We offer worlds of learning and experience - the course participants themselves do the learning.

Preparing for the most varied of scenarios as realistically as possible is a central concern of the Regio Basel Industrial Fire Service (RBIFS). «We are therefore looking for places like the Intercantonal Fire Service Training Centre in Balsthal,» explains Oliver Hofer, Fire Chief of the RBIFS Schweizerhalle. There, the RBIFS books the training infrastructure to conduct its own courses.

The scheduling and shorter journey for the participants were the reason for Markus Hostettler 2019 to move the respiratory protection module 3 (operation) of the Swiss Fire Service Association (SFSA) from Andelfingen to Balsthal. Not an easy task for the course manager, because differences between the training facilities influence the course of the training.