2nd edition of Loyd’s Fundamentals of Fire and Emergency Services published

TEEXan Jason Loyd credits the fire service with turning his life around, and his textbook, Fundamentals of Fire and Emergency Services, now in its 2nd edition, is one way he chose to give back to the fire service community.

The textbook, which he coauthored by James D. Richardson, was originally published in 2009 by Brady Publishing, a division of Pearson, Inc. The book follows the National Fire Academy and Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education (FESHE) curriculum guidelines and includes the 16 Life Safety initiatives of the National Fallen Firefighter’s Foundation.  Loyd dedicated the new edition to Firefighter Dick Danes of the Brazos County Pct. 3 Volunteer Fire Department, who lost his life during a training exercise in 2012. The textbook has been adopted by more than 50 colleges and universities across the country, including the FESHE High School to College Pathways programs in the states of Georgia and Alabama, he said.

Twenty years ago, Loyd couldn’t have imagined this day.  As a high school dropout with dyslexia and ADHD, he was unhappy with his job in the oil field, when his future wife challenged him with: “What job would you like to do?” The answer was “firefighter.”  With her encouragement, he completed his GED and began working on a fire science degree from San Antonio College, where he met Martin Davila, Chair of the San Antonio College First Responders Academy, who wrote the foreword to the book.  With the assistance of Davila and a state program for adults with learning disabilities, Loyd gained the study skills and the love of learning that eventually propelled him through an associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree and master’s degree.
While in San Antonio, he obtained a job as a contract firefighter with the Department of Defense and was stationed in Hungary and Bosnia.  During his tour in Bosnia, he got his first chance to be an instructor instead of a student, teaching classes in Firefighting I and II for Bosnian nationals. His love of teaching was born.  He returned to the U.S. to lead the fire science program at Weatherford College, where he started an online fire science degree program.  He joined TEEX Emergency Services Training Institute in 2007 as an industrial fire instructor, before being tapped to serve as the subject matter expert for a new TEEX Online Recruit Academy program developed in conjunction with Pennwell Corp. He currently is the training manager for the Online Recruit Academy at Brayton Fire Training Field.

The new edition includes some color photos taken at Brayton Fire Training Field, including the cover photo of Prop 64 Gas Transport. To learn more about the textbook, visit Bradybooks.com.