10 Minute-Training: What you can’t see, touch or smell can pose the greatest threat.
10-Minute Training
What you can’t see, touch or smell
can pose the greatest threat.
By Ed Hartin
B Shifter Buckslip, Jan. 20, 2026
Every month, the B Shifter Buckslip features a 10-Minute Training scenario designed to provide a bit of synthetic experience while enhancing your ability to recognize patterns, identify relevant cues, expectancies and anomalies, set plausible goals, and develop a workable incident action plan.
Arriving at the scene of a medical emergency with no obvious hazards can create a false sense of security. Even when everything appears safe, unseen dangers can still put responders and occupants at risk, making situational awareness essential from the start.
Some incidents are exactly what they seem to be. In other cases, they are not, and unanticipated conditions can pose significant risk to occupants and responders alike. This month’s drill emphasizes situational awareness, highlighting the frequently underestimated hazards of medical responses. In practical terms:
1. We must treat EMS calls—especially unconscious patients or cardiac arrests—as a potential environmental emergency until we know more.
2. Atmospheric monitoring tools are not just convenient add-ons, they are essential pieces of equipment that enable us to detect and monitor hazardous conditions that can turn responders into patients.
Click the image below to download the drill.
For other Ten-Minute Trainings, visit commandcompetence.com
Ed Hartin retired as fire chief with East County Fire and Rescue in Camas, Wash., after a 50-year fire service career. Ed maintains an active international training and consulting practice and is a Blue Card instructor. He holds the Chief Fire Officer designation from the Commission on Professional Credentialing and is a Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers. Ed has undergraduate degrees in fire protection technology and fire service administration and a master’s degree in education. Since 2017, Ed has developed more than 450 10-Minute Trainings to provide ICs with deliberate practice to build competence.