Who’s Running Your Pump at 2 a.m.?

When the tones drop in the middle of the night, the engine leaves with whoever is on. Someone has to drive it, and someone has to run the pump when it gets there. In plenty of departments, the list of people who can do that confidently is shorter than the chief would like.

Back in April, Bureau Chief Trevor Frodge raised this in a FireRescue1 column titled “Who should be trusted behind the wheel of a fire apparatus?” Frodge runs training for the West Chester Fire Department outside Cincinnati. Over his career he has worked for seven agencies, and each one had its own driving program, run its own way. He also makes a point that stuck with me. The people signing off new drivers are often just other drivers, with no formal instructor training of their own.

His column is mostly about getting the rig to the scene safely, and that is where most of the risk sits. The same questions carry over once the engine is parked at the hydrant and somebody has to flow water. Who taught them? Against what standard? And when did they last do it for real?

The Standard Changed in 2024

For years, driver/operator qualifications lived in NFPA 1002. In 2024 NFPA folded that standard, along with NFPA 1001 and two others, into a single document, NFPA 1010. The driver/operator material now sits in Chapters 11 through 17, with the pumper requirements in Chapter 12.

States have been rewriting their courses to match. South Carolina’s fire academy, for example, added an accredited written exam and a skills evaluation to all four of its driver/operator courses starting in September 2025. Alabama’s fire college moved its apparatus operator courses to the new IFSTA handbook in June 2026.

That is good news for consistency. But a certification is a snapshot. It shows an operator could do the job on test day. It says much less about whether they can still do it eight months later, on a cold night, with a crew waiting on water.

Pump Skills Fade When They Sit Unused

Most engine companies don’t flow water at a working fire every shift. A volunteer operator might go months between real fires. Meanwhile the parts of the job that go wrong under stress are the ones that need practice: getting the discharge pressure right for the line that was pulled, accounting for friction loss on a long stretch, setting the relief valve, and moving from tank water to a hydrant without starving the attack line.

Nobody forgets these things on purpose. They just slip when they aren’t used. Then the first time an operator has to think through a two-line hydraulics problem in months, it happens on the fireground.

Training Time Is the Real Bottleneck

Departments know all of this. The hard part is finding the hours. Taking an engine out of service for a pump drill burns fuel, puts wear on the apparatus, and needs an instructor and a water source. Frodge notes that replacement apparatus can take upward of four years to arrive, which makes every hour on the rig count.

State academies feel the same squeeze. In February 2026 minutes, the Vermont Fire Academy reported a $20,000 state grant supporting Fire Instructor I and Pumping Apparatus Driver training, and in the same meeting described training requests that go well past what it can deliver. That is a common story across the country.

What Consistent Pump Training Looks Like

Frodge argues that operator candidates should have documented time with qualified instructors, plus both a written test and a hands-on evaluation. That approach works just as well for the pump panel. Every operator should face the same scenarios, be measured against the same expected results, and leave a record that a training officer can look at later.

Nothing replaces time on a real pump panel. What a department can do is make sure the time between those drills isn’t wasted, so that when an operator does get on the truck, the hydraulics are already fresh.

Where PumpForge Fits

I’m a software developer, and I built PumpForge to help with exactly this gap. It is a fire pump operator training simulator that runs in a web browser. Operators work through pump evolutions on a realistic panel, and the department gets a record of each attempt. They can practice at the station, at home, or between calls, without taking a rig out of service.

It isn’t meant to replace hands-on drills or your certification program. It gives operators a way to keep their skills sharp in between, and it gives training officers a consistent way to see who is ready and who needs more time.

A Question Worth Asking

If you lead a department, try this. Count the people on your roster who could run the pump on a working structure fire tonight. Then ask when each of them last flowed water for real. If the second answer makes you pause, you are in good company, and it is a gap worth closing.