Gilmer County Fire Rescue is a relatively young department filled with skilled and driven individuals. As we lay out our future foundation, we feel it is important to develop and grow our future Company Officers right here in-house. It is also critical that we make every effort to promote from within our organization using our motivated and qualified personnel.

The CODA program is designed to prepare and train our best and brightest in-house firefighters to assume leadership roles within our department. Through leadership-based training, mentoring, and hands-on applications, we can better prepare our future leaders for the role of Company Officer.

The CODA program will cover driver engineer responsibilities, company officer and command classes, station and engine responsibilities, building construction, leadership methodologies, teaching and instructing, human resource topics, budgets and funding, fireground responsibilities, tactics and strategies, fireground scenarios, customer service, “Pride and Ownership”, team building, and they will assume leadership positions while attending class. In all, there will be close to 300 hours of class room and hands on training to better prepare them for the role of Company Officers. Our goal is to develop them for their leadership roles, and not just solely to test them for the Company Officer position.

We are proud as a department to offer this unique leadership opportunity to our firefighters. It is our plan to utilize the CODA program to train, educate, and promote future leaders from within our organization.

~Chief Kauffman