NFPA 1405 Guide for Land-based Firefighters who respond to Marine Vessel Fires is the guideline first published in 1990 to provide the fire service with information to assist fire departments in training, planning and responding to ship fires. It is NOT a standard. There are several organizations who may call it a standard in order to scare departments into taking their training programs for fear of failure to meet a standard. NFPA 1405 provides good information upon which a training program can be developed. All of TMSA's programs were developed utilizing this guideline. In addition, TMSA provided significant input to the revised 2006 edition of the guideline.
NFPA 1005 is the Professional Qualification Standard for Marine Firefighter (Levels I and II). Virginia is now offering certification to this standard during the annual Marine Firefighting Symposium. The ProQual standard is available to qualified testing agencies to certify training programs to meet this new standard. TMSA was instrumental as part of the Task Force put together by NFPA to develop a standard for Marine Firefighting. TMSA's courses provide the necessary training to meet the proposed standards and have been revised to reflect and align the material with the format of this new standard. TMSA is working with other testing agencies to develop certification programs to meet this new standard.
