(Note: Some HOT classes are two (2) day HOT classes. The two day HOT classes won't show again on day #2. Only the remaining ones that are not two (2) days will show.

Lead Instructor: Ray McCormack & Cadre

Class Description: This is a hybrid class that combines lecture with hands on. The three lectures are on the Nozzle, Back Up, and Boss positions. The hands on portion of this class revolves around those three engine positions, with students getting the opportunity to work through skills and techniques to better move and advance hoselines. 

Full PPE & SCBA

Class Size: 36

Location: Frederick County Public Safety Training Facility (5370 Public Safety Pl. Frederick MD. 21704)- Burn Building

Lead Instructor: OJ Kolodziej (Magic City Truck Academy)

Class Description: Dark Side of Ladders is a hands-on ground ladder program that pushes beyond traditional raises. Students will explore aggressive and unconventional ladder deployments, rescue techniques, victim removal, ladder bridging, scaling, splicing and problem-solving for real-world fireground challenges.

Full PPE & SCBA

Class Size: 30

Location: Frederick County Public Safety Training Facility Burn Building (5370 Public Safety Pl. Frederick MD. 21704)- Training Tower

Lead Instructor: Josh Miller  (New Haven FD) & Jimmy Lee (FDNY) 

Class Description: This program is designed to provide firefighters with the knowledge and hands-on skills necessary to perform rope-based rescue operations during structural fire incidents when traditional rescue options are no longer viable. When occupants are trapped either above the fire or on the fire floor and cannot be removed via interior stairs, aerial devices, or portable ladders, firefighters must have a rapid and effective alternative.

Students will learn the policies, procedures, equipment, and operational considerations associated with deploying rescue systems from a roof or from a floor above the victim. Topics include equipment inspection, anchor selection, lowering devices, firefighter and victim attachment methods, edge operations, communications, and deployment considerations. Emphasis is placed on simple, practical systems that can be rapidly deployed under fireground conditions by truck, rescue, and engine company personnel.

Students will be introduced to both traditional and modern rope rescue techniques. The program examines conventional methods utilizing left-laid life safety rope, wrapped carabiners, and legacy lowering systems while also exploring newer equipment and contemporary rescue practices. Participants will gain an understanding of the advantages, limitations, and operational considerations of each approach, allowing them to make informed decisions based on their department's equipment, staffing, and operational needs.

Through classroom instruction and hands-on evolutions, participants will build and operate rescue systems, perform victim removals, work with limited staffing, and develop an understanding of the tactical decision-making required during a last-resort rescue. The course focuses on providing firefighters with realistic, field-tested options when conventional rescue methods are no longer available.

This course is ideal for firefighters, company officers, truck companies, rescue companies, and special operations personnel seeking to add another life-saving capability to their fireground toolbox. Whether operating from a roof, an upper floor, or another suitable anchor point, students will leave with the skills and confidence to perform a rescue when time is critical and options are limited.

Full PPE & SCBA

Class Size: 16

Location: Frederick County Fire/Rescue Station #29 (37 Thomas Johnson Dr, Frederick MD. 21702)- Classroom & Training Tower

Lead Instructor: Bob Mccaa (Frederick County Fire/Rescue)

Class Description: "The Building is your enemy. Know your enemy." - Francis Brannigan.

This class is a tour of downtown Frederick, Maryland. In this tour, we will discuss and demonstrate the 5 building structure types recognized by the American Fire Service. We will discuss historical events in Frederick, including Fires that have occured on the tour route. This course will involve walking about 3-5 miles through downtown Frederick. Students will receive hand-outs and links to information that will reinforce topics, enabling the student to apply concepts to improve their strategies, tactics and training for their home service areas.

PPE: None (Walking Shoes/ Hiking Boots Preferred)

Class Size: 24

Location: Frederick County Public Safety Training Facility (5370 Public Safety Pl. Frederick MD. 21704)- Annex Building- Meet at Bus

Lead Instructor: Jon Kasouf (FDNY) & Big Apple Fire Tactics Cadre

Class Description: This class puts firefighters to work on the skills that define an aggressive and effective truck company. This hands-on class focuses on the tactics, techniques, and decision-making needed to make a difference when the fireground is at its worst.

Students will work through skills such as forcible entry, primary search, can confidence, victim removal, downed firefighter packaging and removal, VEIS, vertical ventilation, portable ladder operations and aerial ladder placement. While learning how these individual skills come together as a coordinated truck company operation.

The course challenges firefighters to adapt proven truck tactics to everything from urban-style construction to modern suburban homes, emphasizing speed, discipline, communication, and the ability to make sound tactical decisions under pressure.

PPE: Full PPE & SCBA w/ Spare Bottle

Class Size: 20

Class Location: Frederick County Public Safety Training Facility- Burn Building (5370 Public Safety Pl, Frederick MD. 21704)

Lead Instructor: Hank Henline (FCFR/ Hasty Fire Products) & Will  Densmore (Knightdale FD./ Backstep Fire Training LLC.) 

Class Description: This intense 2-day hands-on training class brings together instructors from Hasty Fire Products and Backstep Fire Training to deliver a comprehensive approach to victim search and downed firefighter rescue. Combining Backstep's victim-focused search techniques with Hasty's modern Rapid Intervention tactics, students will develop the skills and mindset necessary to locate, assess, and remove victims and downed firefighters in challenging fireground environments.

Students will dive into modern RIT operations, utilizing the game-changing Hasty Rescue Strap and practical rescue techniques to locate, package, and remove downed firefighters from challenging environments. From window removals and through-the-floor rescues to below-grade and collapse scenarios, students will develop efficient rescue techniques that emphasize teamwork, adaptability, and decision-making under pressure. Alongside these skills, students will conduct aggressive, victim-focused searches while moving with a plan, maintaining orientation, communicating with their crew, recognizing where victims are most likely to be, and making good decisions when visibility is limited and conditions are changing around them.

Day 1 will focus on hands-on skill development, repetition, and practical application, while Day 2 will put those skills to the test through realistic LIVE FIRE scenarios. Students will be challenged to operate in high-stress environments, adapt to changing conditions, and execute efficient search and rescue operations. Built for both veteran firefighters and those new to the job, this class is designed to build confidence, sharpen your skills, and reinforce one mission: Find them. Get them out.

PPE: Full PPE & SCBA w/ Spare Bottle

Class Size: 25

Class Location: Hagerstown Fire Dept. Training Center (940 Bowman Ave. Hagerstown MD. 21740)

Lead Instructor: Jason Rivera (New Haven FD/ Tactical Resource Fire Training)  

Class Description: This 2-day class begins with a short tool lab, to assure all students are familiar with the equipment being used for the class and basic extrication, lifting and stabilization concepts. The students will then be broken into realistic size groups to rotate through multiple, challenging learning stations.

On day two the students will have to perform extrications at some real-world, difficult scenarios. The instructors will act more as safety officers than teachers, but are always willing to make suggestions, answer questions or provide some oversight into best practices.

This will not be a simple door pop or roof removal class. The scenarios will be difficult and complex, with many moving parts. Students should have a background in vehicle extrication as they will be coming up with the gameplan and implementing it with minimal instructor input.

Don't take our word for it...ask anyone who took this class at Key City in 2025 or 2026, this class is legit!

PPE: Full PPE/ Tech Rescue Gear

Class Size: 21

Class Location: Frederick County Public Safety Training Facility (5370 Public Safety Pl, Frederick MD. 21704)- Extrication Pad

Lead Instructor: Kevin Pfluger & Dagum Cadre    

Class Description: The Dagum Push is an intensive, hands-on training program designed to develop confident, aggressive, and disciplined engine company firefighters. This course emphasizes the importance of maintaining an open, flowing handline to control the fire environment, improve victim survivability, and create safer operating conditions for firefighters.

Our instructors foster a challenging yet supportive learning environment where students are encouraged to push their limits, refine their skills, and learn without fear of failure. Using a progressive crawl, walk, run approach, each evolution builds on the previous one, allowing firefighters of varying experience levels to gain confidence before advancing to more demanding scenarios. Students will receive in-depth instruction and practical experience in:

-Efficient and effective hose stretches

-Stationary flowing techniques for maintaining control of the fire environment

-Flowing and advancing the hoseline through doorways, around corners, and up stairwells (when available)

-Nozzle control and body positioning for extended operations

-Victim removal techniques while operating as an engine crew

-Engine company teamwork and communication during fire attack

Every skill taught is directly applicable to the fireground and is intended to improve your performance on your very next first-due assignment. Throughout the course, students will be challenged physically and mentally while learning practical techniques that increase efficiency, confidence, and effectiveness under realistic conditions.

Whether you are a new firefighter looking to build a solid foundation or an experienced firefighter seeking to sharpen your engine company skills, The Dagum Push will provide proven techniques and realistic training that translate directly to improved fireground performance and better service to the communities you protect.

PPE: Full PPE & SCBA w/ Spare Bottle

Class Size: 25

Class Location: Frederick County Public Safety Training Facility (5370 Public Safety Pl, Frederick MD. 21704)- Pond Parking Lot

Lead Instructor: Andy Starnes (Insight Fire Training) 

Class Description: Firefighter's face an environment of high heat release rate fuels, low to zero visibility, with unknown conditions or pathways to locate potential fire victims. In this training, firefighters will learn key objectives on understanding heat transfer, the types of thermal imaging cameras in use, limitations & contraindications of thermal imaging usage, and ten key tips for thermal imaging success. These objectives are experientially relevant and apply to every position, role, and function on the fireground. Students will be provided a series of classroom presentations followed by live fire small scale prop demonstrations.

Full PPE

Class Size: 30

Class Location: Frederick County Public Safety Training Facility (5370 Public Safety Pl, Frederick MD. 21704)- Annex Building & Classroom TBD

Lead Instructor: Jason Ilowite (Loudoun County Fire/Rescue & Bare Bones Rescue)

Class Description: RIT From Your Pocket explores numerous methods for solving the most common fire ground emergencies, utilizing only the equipment being carried by the firefighter. This methodology recognizes the extreme stress that a MAYDAY situation brings, and aims to allow any firefighter operating within the area to take immediate action. To accomplish this, a heavy emphasis is placed on using several different kinds of RIT straps and personal escape kits in ways that are not commonly thought of.

Class Size: 16

Class Location: Frederick County Public Safety Training Facility (5370 Public Safety Pl, Frederick MD. 21704)- Training Tower

Lead Instructor: Tye Porada (Hagerstown Fire. Dept.)

Class Description: Destroying the fires advantage is exactly as it sounds. Instructors will guide/instruct class members through the ideology and basic understanding of how to not let the fires get ahead of us.

Class will cover fire dynamics from all stages of fire, smoke = fuel, ventilation points, cutting fires off, and attacking today’s fires with strong and structural decision making. A majority of this class will be conducted inside of burn building/ flashover simulator. Students will be introduced to how fire evolves through its life stages, on a one to one basis inside of the flashover simulator. In addition to fire growth, students will be shown how different ventilation points affect fire dynamics.

Secondly, students will be positioned inside of a burn room that has been constructed to have a hollow core door prop inside. This prop will be used to show how simple door control efforts can be greatly useful for first arriving companies. The class will be taught as an experience for the students.

Conversations and instruction will be provided as the class is sitting around a firehouse table. This class has been widely accepted into the Hagerstown Fire Department/ Washington County recruit program for all new firefighters on the job. Students will leave the class with a better respect and understanding on how we, the responders, can either make or break our fire activity.

Class Size: 25

Class Location: Hagerstown Fire Dept. Training Center (940 Bowman Ave. Hagerstown MD. 21740)

Lead Instructor: Will Ball (FCFR)

Class Description: A firefighter Mayday is one of the most demanding events an Incident Commander will ever face. The first three minutes are critical—but what happens next will test every aspect of your command presence, situational awareness, communication, and decision-making.

This course places command officers in the center of the Mayday operation, where radio traffic is escalating, resources are being stretched, fire conditions are changing, and a firefighter’s survival depends on disciplined command leadership.

Through real-world case studies, high-pressure command simulations, and scenario-based discussions, participants will confront the complex challenges that emerge after the initial Mayday declaration. Students will practice organizing rescue operations, deploying rapid intervention resources, managing competing tactical priorities, maintaining accountability, controlling radio traffic, and making critical decisions with incomplete information.

This is not a course about memorizing a Mayday checklist. It is about commanding through chaos, restoring operational control, protecting the firefighters still working, and building a coordinated rescue operation when the stakes are at their highest.

Class Size: 

Class Location: Frederick County Fire/Rescue Station #29 (37 Thomas Johnson Dr, Frederick MD. 21702)- Classroom

Frederick Leadership program

Lead Instructor: Will Ball (FCFR)

Class Description: A firefighter Mayday is one of the most demanding events an Incident Commander will ever face. The first three minutes are critical—but what happens next will test every aspect of your command presence, situational awareness, communication, and decision-making.

This course places command officers in the center of the Mayday operation, where radio traffic is escalating, resources are being stretched, fire conditions are changing, and a firefighter’s survival depends on disciplined command leadership.

Through real-world case studies, high-pressure command simulations, and scenario-based discussions, participants will confront the complex challenges that emerge after the initial Mayday declaration. Students will practice organizing rescue operations, deploying rapid intervention resources, managing competing tactical priorities, maintaining accountability, controlling radio traffic, and making critical decisions with incomplete information.

This is not a course about memorizing a Mayday checklist. It is about commanding through chaos, restoring operational control, protecting the firefighters still working, and building a coordinated rescue operation when the stakes are at their highest.

Class Size: 

Class Location: Frederick County Fire/Rescue Station #29 (37 Thomas Johnson Dr, Frederick MD. 21702)- Classroom

**=Denotes Frederick Leadership program