Shopping around for my BST and AFF revalidations. Prices vary from the cheapest at Delgado or San Jac at $300-$500 a course to on the high end is Mitags at $555-$800. I guess some are doing virtual firefighting too, not the training I’d like.
Has anyone found their revalidations to be something they took some new knowledge back to the ship? Best or worst courses you took? How does Mitags and SUNY have a 2 day course and others like MPT has 1 day basic safety revalidations?
Your questions appear to conflict with each other. Perhaps some schools want you to take something back and spend some more time on it, and others want to get you the certificate as fast as possible.
Also, the difference might be that the shorter course is for “revalidation” and the longer is a “refresher.” Refresher courses cover more than the revalidation courses.
If all the courses are held to the same standard, how is this possible then?
They are held to the same MINIMUM standard. Schools are free to provide more than the minimum.
I wondered about this myself. They are both revalidation courses.
Basically it comes down to access to a pool and fire field. MPT, for example, has pools and a fire field located close enough to do it all in one day. MiTags and some of the other schools the fire field in particular is far away, and it can’t all fit in one day, so they stretch it out to fill two days since it’s going to take two days anyways.
Driving all the way to North Bend eats up time.
I should have realized that. SUNY does the in-water stuff on campus, the fire field stuff is done off-site (not sure of the current location, either the NYC facility on Randall’s Island, or Nassau County in Bethpage).
This upkeep of a license gets more expensive each time. I just really want to know the best place to spend my money and time if I’ll be doing this every 5 years.
They’re going to the Nassau Fire Service Academy in Bethpage these days. I understand KP will be using them as well from now on. I just redid mine at SUNY this year, the SUNY instructor and the NCFSA Fire Chiefs were all great. I highly recommend it, if it’s convenient for someone to get to.